Habiba Cooper Diallo is the author of #BlackInSchool. She was a finalist in the 2020 Bristol Short Story Prize. She was also one of six finalists in the 2018 London Book Fair Pitch Competition. She is a women’s health advocate passionate about bringing an end to a maternal health condition called obstetric fistula. You can find her on Twitter @haalabeeba
Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail is a multi-passionate, multi-genre author of several books who loves telling hidden, inclusive stories for audiences of all ages.
Danielle’s latest picture book, Freddie the Flyer is coming out in Fall 2023 from Tundra Books. It’s co-authored with Gwich’in pilot Fred Carmichael, and will feature the beautiful illustrations of Inuvialuit artist Audrea Wulf.
Her first chapter book – Fever on the Forgotten Coast – is out on submission, as is her first women’s fiction book, The 500 Year Flood.
In 2022, with the support of a Canada Council Creation Grant and Access Copyright Professional Development Grant, she will return to her creative nonfiction book about trauma, family, and the largest Indian Hospital in Canada.
If you’re looking for a sharp-eyed cheerleader to help you with editing and coaching, Danielle will help you through the writing and publishing journey with empathy and encouragement. Please contact her directly to discuss working together.
JOHN A. READ is a telescope operator at the Burke-Gaffney Observatory a member of the Halifax Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC) and recently graduated with a degree in astrophysics from Saint Mary’s University. In 2020 he was presented with an RASC award for Excellence in Science Communication. John also cohosts RASC’s series “Explore the Universe Online.” He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Andrea Miller is the author of Awakening My Heart: Essays, Articles, and Interviews on the Buddhist Life (Pottersfield Press), My First Book of Canadian Birds (Nimbus Publishing), and The Day the Buddha Woke Up (Wisdom Publications). She’s also the deputy editor and a staff writer at Lion’s Roar magazine (formerly called the Shambhala Sun) and the editor of three anthologies for Shambhala Publications, including Buddha’s Daughters: Teachings from Women Who Are Shaping Buddhism in the West.
Miller has an MFA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, a Bachelor of Journalism from the University of King’s College, and a Bachelor of Arts in English literature from Dalhousie University. Her writing has appeared in The Best Women’s Travel Writing series, the Best Buddhist Writing series, The Chronicle Herald, The Globe and Mail, Saltscapes, The Antigonish Review, Prairie Fire, and a wide range of other publications. Miller lives in Halifax with her husband and two children.
”It may take time, but dreams can come true.” This speaks to Hui Zhou, a bilingual non-fiction writer, a freelance interpreter and translator with a long career in natural science.
Born, educated, worked, married, became a mother and a respected senior scientist in her home city Beijing, Hui created her next opportunity to Canada. In the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, she researched in her favourite field-entomology and obtained a Master of Science Degree, dreamed for a long time, from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.
Still, Hui explores wider in science, but she never stops writing that had been one of her hobbies for most of her life. Recently she turned writing more into a real career. Thus, one more dream comes true.
Her nonfiction prose about St. Margaret’s Bay, winter stories in Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy . . . and many more swarm into multi-medium in Canada and in China.
She had dreamed of publishing books. In May 2018, her first book, Running Wild with Bossy Boy, was self-designed, self-published. It tells the real stories about chicken’s personalities, or chicken-alities especially to children, but also with adults in mind.
Hui is writing two creative nonfiction books for children, revises her prose for a Nonfiction Collection and sometimes writes for print media.
Gardening, a heritage from Grandpa, remains her favourite pastime.
Sal Sawler is the award-winning author of four books: 100 Things You Don’t Know About Nova Scotia; 100 Things You Don’t Know About Atlantic Canada – For Kids; Be Prepared: The Frankie MacDonald Guide to Life, the Weather, and Everything; and When the Ocean Came to Town (forthcoming in Fall 2023). Be Prepared was nominated for both Hackmatack and Forest of Reading Awards. 100 Things You Don’t Know About Atlantic Canada – For Kids was also nominated for a Hackmatack Award.
When they’re not writing books, Sal is working as a publicist for graphic novel publisher Conundrum Press, reviewing children’s literature, and writing web content for tech companies. They live in Nova Scotia with their partner, two kids, two dogs, and two cats.
Joanne Light holds degrees in psychology, education and fine art (painting) from Acadia and NSCAD universities (influences ranged from Blake, Jung, Teilhard de Chardin, Vanier, Frye, Plath, Elizabeth Bishop and Roethke to Rothko, Borduas, Riopelle and Beuys). She taught in six provinces in Deschambault and Big Trout Lakes and Davis Inlet, Whapmagoostui and Kuuguarapik, Kimosoompotnak, Kitchee Nuhmay Koosib and Natuashish and five countries in Korea, Brunei Darussalam, Hong Kong and in Abu Dhabi.
She has three juried acceptances at the Banff Centre’s Wired Writing Studio and Advanced Seminar in poetry with mentors Irving Layton, Barbara Klar, Sid Marty, Fred Stenson and Alison Pick; also, Yvonne Trainor at the Maritime Writers’ Workshop; Daphne Marlatt at Sage Hill Writing Experience’s Poetry Colloquium; Mick Burrs at the Saskatchewan Writer’s Guild and Thomson Highway and Allen Ginsburg at the WFNS. Her most recent journal publication was two poems in Toronto’s Arc Magazine.
Light has published two trade books with Nimbus Publishing and three titles under her own press–Tapwema. She is presently finishing up a memoir: On, On, On, On: Stories of Teaching and Travelling.
Having travelled to twenty-five countries, she has lived for the past six years in her birthplace–Halifax.
She has given writing workshops in poetry nd travel writing at Dalhousie University and the Saint John Arts Centre and is a seasoned teacher and facilitator.
Captain Lou Boudreau was born in Canada, and first went to sea when he was six months old aboard the famous 98 foot schooner “Yankee”. His father owned and sailed the schooner in the beautiful Bras D’Or Lakes of Cape Breton in Nova Scotia. When Lou was about one year old, he took his first ocean voyage aboard the schooner “Doubloon” with his mother and father. This momentous first sail aboard this large schooner would take Lou away from Canada and onto a life of adventure in the warmer islands of the Caribbean.
Growing up aboard his father’s schooners and on the island of St. Lucia, Lou spent a magical childhood exploring every nook and cranny of these large yachts, and under the guidance of his father, learned the ropes of life at sea. Spending most of his early life in Marigot Bay, St. Lucia, Lou became fluent in Patois, the local language of St. Lucia. He would spend time free diving and spear-fishing in the crystal clear waters of the islands and would inevitably bring back lots of lobster, conch and other delicious seafood for the charter guests onboard the family’s yachts.As a young adult, Lou began sailing as a crew member with his father and, after sitting for his Master’s papers, he went on to skipper the 90 foot ketch “Atlanta”, and the 138 foot Hereshoff schooner “Mariette”. Over the years, Captain Lou Boudreau has been fortunate to have skippered some of the finest vessels in the world.
After swallowing the anchor in 1996, Lou returned to Canada and began writing. His first book, “The Man Who Loved Schooners”, was published in 2000. A fictional novel, “Fandango’s Gold”, followed in 2006 (Film Fools gold) and “Where the Trade Winds Blow”, published in 2012, chronicles his own life growing up in the Caribbean. Several of his stories were also published in the anthology “We Belong to the Sea”.
Allison is a freelance writer. Since 2003, she has worked from her home in Prospect.
While studying journalism at Ryerson University, she spent a summer working as a reporter for The Rural Voice, a farming magazine based in Blyth, Ont. She happily travelled the countryside talking to farmers and hearing stories about the latest breed of cattle and amazing new varieties of corn and cauliflower.
From Blyth, she moved on to work as a reporter at several daily newspapers in Ontario, including The Brantford Expositor and The Standard in St. Catharines. After landing a summer internship at The Globe and Mail in Toronto, she stayed for another two years writing and editing for the paper’s website.
In 2003, she returned to Nova Scotia, the place she had fallen in love with as an English and Russian student at the University of King’s College a decade earlier.
Her work has been published in newspapers and magazines. She has also written seven non-fiction books.
Her first book 250 Years of Progress: Halifax Regional Fire and Emergency was published by Nimbus in 2005. Her second book, Rum-Running was published by Nimbus in 2009. It was the first book in a series called Stories of Our Past.
In 2015, The Roar of the Sea, a book ghostwritten by Allison, was published by Boulder Publications. Her book, “The Saddest Ship Afloat”- The Tragedy of the MS St. Louis was published by Nimbus in 2016.
Broken Pieces, a children’s non-fiction book about the Halifax Explosion, appeared in bookstores just before Dec. 6, 2017, the 100th anniversary of the explosion. Broken Pieces was nominated for a 2019 Silver Birch Award by the Ontario Library Association and a 2019-2020 Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award.
Allison also works as a writing coach with journalism students at the University of King’s College.
The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia is based in Kjipuktuk, in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship,” which Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) Peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725.
The treaties do not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognize Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and establish the rules for an ongoing relationship between nations.
© Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, 2021. All rights reserved.
The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that each workshop’s participants share a level or range of writing / publication experience. This is to ensure each participant gets value from the workshop and is presented with information, strategies, and skills that suit their current writing priorities.
To this end, the “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions developed by WFNS:
For “intensive” and “masterclass” workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer (that is, participant-to-participant) feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed.
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 you’re uncertain of your experience level with regard to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca
