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Nonfiction (adult)

Michelle Hébert

Michelle has an MFA in creative non-fiction from the University of King’s College, a degree in journalism, and training and experience in community social work. She combined her journalism skills with her love of history and passion for social justice to write her first non-fiction book, Enriched by Catastrophe: Social Work and Social Conflict after the Halifax Explosion, published by Fernwood in 2007. The Toronto Star named her debut novel, Every Little Thing She Does is Magic (Vagrant 2024),  one of the 20 ‘Must Read’ books of Summer 2024. Her debut memoir, A Good Girl’s Guide to Lying: Losing my Memories, Searching for Truth, & Living with Dissociative Amnesia, will be published by Nimbus in Fall 2026.

Michelle combines her social work and writing skills to offer services for writers. This includes supporting memoirists as they write about difficult subjects, helping writers struggling with imposter syndrome or writer’s block, and guiding writers to go deeper into themselves and their stories. Find out more at her website, michellehebertwrites.com

Michelle lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia/Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. She posts about writing, mental health, cake, and her cats on Bluesky (@hfxwordy) and Instagram (michelle.hebert.writes).

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Sara Jewell

Author of a children’s picture book and two books of nonfiction for adults

Freelance magazine writer

Substitute Teacher, elementary school

Licensed lay worship leader, United Church of Canada

Bachelor of Arts (honours) English and Bachelor of Education from Queen’s University, Kingston, ON

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Kelly S Thompson

Kelly S. Thompson is a writer and retired officer in the Canadian Armed Forces. Kelly has a Honours Bachelor degree in Professional Writing from York University, a certificate in Publishing from Ryerson University, a master’s in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and is completing a PhD in Literary and Critical Studies, Creative Writing, at the University of Gloucestershire in the UK, where she examines representations of grief and trauma in memoir.

Kelly’s work has won awards in a variety of genres. She won the House of Anansi Press Golden Anniversary Award for Fiction, the 2014 and 2017 Barbara Novak Award for Personal Essay, and was shortlisted for Room magazine’s 2013 and 2014 Creative Nonfiction awards, placing 2nd in the 2019 contest. Her essays have appeared in anthologies across Canada, including Boobs, by Caitlin Press, Embedded on the Home Front, with Heritage House and Everyday Heroes with Simon & Schuster.

Her work has appeared in literary magazines across the country and her professional writing has been printed in Chatelaine, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, and more. Her article on military sexual harassment titled “Battle Fatigue,” was runner up for Feature Article of the Year with the Professional Writers Association of Canada. She was also nominated for a National Magazine Award in 2022.

Her memoir Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes from the Forces with Penguin Random House Canada, was an instant Globe and Mail bestseller and declared one of the top 100 books of 2019 by the Globe and Mail.

Kelly also teaches writing to all levels, having run after-school writing programs for teenage  girls, creative writing classes for children, and taught Creative Writing and Communications at Trent University. She now teaches at the University of King’s Creative Non Fiction. She also developed and runs classes for Royal Roads University and Loyalist College.

Kelly’s next memoir, Still, I Cannot Save You, will release with McClelland & Stewart in January, 2023.

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Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail

Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail is a multi-passionate, multi-genre author of six books who loves telling  inclusive stories for audiences of all ages.

Danielle’s latest co-authored picture book, Freddie the Flyer came out in Fall 2023 from Tundra Books. It features the life story of Fred Carmichael, the first Indigenous commercial pilot in the Arctic, and illustrations were created by Inuvialuit artist Audrea Loreen-Wulf. It is part of the Dolly Parton Imagination Library, TD Summer Reading Program, shortlisted for the Hackmatack nonfiction award, and won the Atlantic Book Awards Readers’ Choice Award in 2024.

Both Freddie the Flyer and her first picture book, Alis the Aviator, were selected as CBC Books’ best of picture books, and Danielle toured them as part of Canadian Children’s Book Week in spring 2024.

Danielle’s other books include Fever on the Forgotten Coast (Rockwater Books), Polar Winds (Dundurn), For the Love of Flying (Robin Brass Books), and the Canadian bestselling essay anthology In This Together: Fifteen Stories of  Truth and Reconciliation (Brindle & Glass).

Danielle is currently revising a creative nonfiction book called Winterburn with the assistance of Canada Council and Arts NS grants, as well as her first book club project, The 500 Year Flood. She is represented by Elizabeth Copps at Copps Literary, who is finalizing contracts on two kidlit projects in spring 2024.

If you’re a writer looking for a sharp-eyed believing mirror to help you with editing and coaching, Danielle will help you through the writing and publishing journey with empathy and encouragement. Please see testimonials from authors she’s worked with (along with rates) on her website at www.daniellemc.com and contact her directly to discuss whether she’s a good fit for you and your work.

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Elizabeth Glenn-Copeland

I am an author, theatre artist and arts educator with more than four decades of professional experience. As a theatre artist, I have toured with Second City doing improv comedy, played the Witch in Hansel and Gretl with the Honolulu Symphony and told my original stories at the Toronto International Storytelling Festival. My arts education credits include work with Learning Through the Arts, World Vision, and the Storytellers School of Toronto.

I served as  Artistic Director of KPH Theater Productions in Miramichi, N.B. from 2012 to 2016, and along with my husband, Beverly Glenn Copeland, completed half a dozen artist residencies* in N.B. schools. I was honoured to serve as Writer-in-Residence* for James M. Hill High School in 2015. (*Funding support through NB Department of Tourism, Heritage and Culture.)

In February 2016 I was part of the faculty at the San Miguel Writers Conference (San Miguel de Allende, Mexico), and led the creative writing workshop at the Knowlton Literary Festival in Knowlton, Quebec in October.

In 2017, I returned to Mount Allison University to indulge myself in two years of full time study of eco-poetry, feminist philosophy, sustainability in education and medieval studies. Thanks to MTA, in the summer of 2017 I completed a residency to research and create a one-act spoken-word play entitled, “Bearing Witness”.

During my tenure as 2018 Writer-in-Residence at Joggins Fossil Institute, I researched and wrote — “Daring to Hope at the Cliff’s Edge: Pangea’s Dream Remembered”: an art/science collaboration and conversation between myself and the three-hundred million year old rock. The theme: how to find what Buddhist eco-philosopher, Joanna Macy calls Active Hope as we stand at this cliff’s edge in our evolution as a species. The book was launched in Sackville, N.B. on Sept. 29, 2019 by Chapel Street Editions.

Due to covid, my cross country tour to promote this book was cancelled, but late 2020 saw a resurgence of interest in the work and its message of hope. I participated in the Writing for Change series launched by The Rose Theater in Brampton, ON. An exciting variation on this theme will be happening virtually on March 21 at The Rose with spoken-word artist extraordinaire, Ian Keteku.

Since moving to Spencers Island in Jan. 2021, I am making new writing and peforming friends and will be part of the Shipwright Sessions (Ships Company Theater) in Aug. 2021.

 

 

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Jan Fancy Hull

Jan Fancy Hull lives and writes beside (and sometimes on) a quiet lake in Lunenburg County. She was born on Nova Scotia’s Eastern Shore.

In November 2021 she embarked on a series of Tim Brown Mysteries, which are set on Nova Scotia’s south shore. By the spring of 2026, ten full-length novels will have been launched.

Her debut non-fiction book, Where’s Home?, was published in 2020. She has published two books of short stories, The Church of Little Bo Peep and other stories, 2021, and Inquire Within, 2022.

All are available from the publisher, Moose House Publications, and most mega-vendors online.

Her poem, “Moss Meditations” was awarded the Rita Joe Poetry Prize in the 2022 Nova Writes literary competition.  Other poems have been published in The Antigonish Review, in Gathering In, an anthology published by Windywood Publishing in 2020, and in a chapbook, What We All Want, with Janet Barkhouse and Cynthia French, 2024.

Before retiring (from steady paycheques), Jan served in various careers, enterprises, pursuits, and avocations, including as arts administrator, sailing tours skipper, and employee benefits broker. She created sculptures from Nova Scotian sandstone, is a member of the Lunenburg Art Gallery Society, and writes.  She is a Member of the Writers Federation of Nova Scotia Writers’ Council.

She also likes to play golf, and drift on the lake in her kayak.

Facebook: Jan Fancy Hull / Jan Hull Stoneist;

Websites:  janfancyhull.ca / thestoneist.com

Amazon author page

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Kim Pittaway

Kim Pittaway is a writer, educator and publishing professional. She is an associate professor and cohort director of creative nonfiction in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of King’s College in Halifax. She is the co-author, with Toufah Jallow, of Toufah: The Woman Who Inspired an African #MeToo Movement (Random House, 2022), which the New York Times described as “riveting…harrowing and propulsive”; and, with Dr. Samra Zafar, co-author of Unconditional: Release Your Past to Transform Your Future (Harper Canada, 2025). She is the recipient of the National Magazine Award Foundation’s Outstanding Achievement Award, and former editor-in-chief of Chatelaine magazine.

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Anne Louise O’Connell

An author, developmental book editor and partner publisher, Anne can be found working on her latest novel, mentoring other authors, publishing books or leading writing workshops. Anne’s first book, @Home in Dubai – Getting Connected Online and on the Ground, was traditionally published in the UK by Summertime Publishing (2011) and re-released by Springtime Books. Her first novel, Mental Pause launched on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2013, and won an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY). Her next novel, Deep Deceit, launched March 8, 2015 and is the first in a planned series called Deep Mysteries. Deep Freeze is scheduled for release March 2025. While living as an expat in Dubai and then Thailand, she was a content creator and a regular contributor to the Wall St. Journal Expat Blog and Global Living Magazine. In 2015, she also published a collection of expat and travel stories called Swimming with the Elephants and Other Adventures. Upon her return to Canada in 2016, after 23 years of expat life, she established OC Publishing in Halifax, NS.

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Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) uses the following terms to describe writers’ experience levels:

  • New writers: those with less than two years’ creative writing experience and/or no short-form publications (e.g., short stories, personal essays, or poems in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with more than two years’ creative writing experience and/or numerous short-form publications.
  • Early-career authors: those with 1 or 2 book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short-form publications.
  • Established authors: those with 3 or 4 book-length publications.
  • Professional authors: those with 5 or more book-length publications.

Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing for children, writing for young adults, and others) provides you with a unique set of experiences and skills, so you might consider yourself an ‘established author’ in one form but a ‘new writer’ in another.

Occasionally, WFNS uses the phrase “emerging and established writers/authors” to mean ‘writers and authors of all experience levels.’

The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the above definitions. A workshop’s participants should usually have similar levels of creative writing and / or publication experience. This ensures that each participant gets value from the workshop⁠ and is presented with info, strategies, and skills that suit their experience. 

For “intensive” and “masterclass” workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed closely.

For all other workshops, the recommended experience level is just that—a recommendation—and we encourage potential participants to follow their own judgment when registering.

If uncertain about your experience level with respect to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca