Play
Norma Shephard
‘Why We Remember‘
The personal and domestic side of war is often revealed in War letters. My presentations on the importance of firsthand accounts and the digitalization of hand-written accounts is ideal for Remembrance Day observations and/or Canadian History studies. Access to my full media kit on the book Dear Harry; A Canadian War Story Told Through Letters, can be found here.
‘Social History Relevance Revealed Through Material Artifacts’
As the director of the Mobile Millinery Museum, I have been educating students, seniors, and others on Canadian Social History through the use of those most personal of historic artefacts: clothing and accessories. Examples of the available presentation topics, which we adapt for student audiences, can be seen in the Museum Presentations Information Kit.
Tina Capalbo
As a teacher, writer, mom, and life-long creative, Tina Capalbo has written everything from lesson plans, blogs, stories, and plays, to volunteer manuals, educator packs, and architectural proposals.
Tina completed her Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Education degrees at Western and her Master of Arts degree at Dalhousie. She has taught high school English and Drama in London and Halifax, English as an Additional Language in Tokyo, Toronto and Halifax, and thousands of writing classes online.
As a WITS author, Tina loves exploring stories with students and offers two workshops: (1) ‘Ari and the Very Loud Bird!’ is a workshop with early elementary students (grades P-3), featuring Ari, an upbeat, non-binary kiddo, who loves to sleep in. The workshop includes a lively reading, a visit with Ari the puppet, and a book chat. Students create a songbird, invent a bird call, and become a noisy chorus of birds. (2) ‘Main Character Energy’ is a creative nonfiction writing workshop for secondary students (grades 10-12). Students engage in life-writing, exploring elements of journaling, memoir, personal essay, personal monologue, and phase autobiography.
Janice Walsh-Cruddas
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Jan Morrison
Jan Morrison’s poems have appeared in literary journals such as Grain, Pottersfield Portfolio, and Newfoundland Quarterly. Her plays, States of Grace; Death, the Musical; Shroom!; Fields of Crimson; and Mrs. Finney’s Hat have been staged at The Chester Playhouse; Neptune Theatre; The Halifax Fringe Festival; and Eastern Front Theatre. She has recently had her debut novel published by Boulder Books – The Crooked Knife. When not writing Jan likes to garden and ramble the shore near her home in Prospect, NS.
Bethany Lake
Bethany Lake is a playwright, novelist, and freelance writer from Nova Scotia. As a playwright, she has had three of her plays produced in Halifax. Her play, No Animal, has been published in The Furious Gazelle, a literary magazine based in New York City.
She is a regular contributor to Rue Morgue magazine, where she has conducted interviews with high-profile actors and directors such as Heather Langenkamp (A Nightmare on Elm Street), Mark Soper (The World According to Garp, Blood Rage) and Damien Leone (Terrifier, Terrifier 2). Bethany’s work has also appeared in The Big Takeover, PRISM international, and Write magazine.
Her first novel, In the Midst of Irrational Things (publisher TBD), began its development in the 2018 Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program.
Bethany received a Bachelor of Arts in Theatre Studies from Dalhousie University before continuing her playwriting education at Tarragon Theatre in Toronto, ON.
She is currently working on her second novel, Silo, as well as a book of nonfiction essays.
Brenda MacLennan-Dunphy
Writer, director and producer, Brenda MacLennan-Dunphy has had two novels published by Pottersfield Press as well- Never Speak of This Again (2018) and The Silence of the Vessel (2020), which was nominated for an Atlantic Book Award. Four of Brenda’s plays have been on the stage at Strathspey Place, a 500 soft seat theatre in Mabou, Cape Breton- John Allan Cameron’s Last Show (November 2021), John Archie and Nellie (2016, 2012) , The Weddin’ Dance (2013), and Displacement (2014). Her play The Reiteach was put at two small stages in 2020. She was a featured writer at the 2021 Cabot Trail Writers Festival and also won the HR Bill Percy Novel Prize in 2017 for Never Speak of This Again. Born and raised in Inverness County, the mother of four is a teacher by trade, but a gypsy by nature. She loves to find characters along the way in life. Brenda lives in Skye Glen, Inverness County, with her wonderful and patient husband, Ed.
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Andrew Wetmore
Andrew Wetmore was born in Digby, spent many years away, and now lives in Clementsport. He was a development officer in the early days of the WFNS, working on the Dramatists’ Coop project to improve the quality and increase the visibility of plays written in Nova Scotia.
As a playwright and screenwriter, Wetmore has written over 60 scripts, many of which have had productions across Canada and the US.
Since 2019, Wetmore has been the editor at Moose House Publications, which publishes books written in, or about, rural Nova Scotia.
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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