Poetry (adult)

Alice Walsh

Alice Walsh writes fiction and nonfiction for adults and children. Her published work includes nine books for children and young adults. Many of her books have been nominated for or won awards. A number of them have been listed as Best Books for Children and Teens in Canada. Her YA novel Pomiuk; Prince of the North (Dundurn 2005) won the Ann Connor Brimer award.

Alice graduated from St. Mary’s University with degrees in criminology and English, and from Acadia with a master’s in Children’s Literature. She has worked as a preschool teacher, volunteer probation officer, creative writing instructor, and hospital ward clerk.

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Deborah Stiles

Deborah Stiles was born and raised in Appalachia, in West Virginia, but found herself moving northward in 1988. A graduate of the University of Maine’s M.A. in Creative Writing in 1990 with the thesis No Curtains on These Windows (a collection of short stories), she has published poems, short stories, agriculture and cooking articles, and scholarly articles in a wide variety of journals in Canada and the U.S.

In 2002, BrickHouse Books (Baltimore, Maryland), published her book-length poem, Movement Catalogued; in 1991, Northern LightsPress (Orono, Maine) published her poetry collection, Riding Limestone. She has completed two additional poetry manuscripts, whose poems have appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Carleton Arts Review, To, Kennebec, Zymergy, Nashwaak Review, Pottersfield Portfolio, and elsewhere. In 1997, after living in Fredericton, NB for three years, she applied for landed immigrant status and also completed her Ph.D. (University of Maine, History) with a doctoral thesis on the Fredericton-based-but rurally-oriented poet and newspaper editor, Martin Butler (1857-1915). Currently, she is working on several projects, including a novel and also the revision of her thesis on Martin Butler. In January 2004, she became a Canadian citizen.

An Associate Professor in Humanities at the Nova Scotia Agricultural College, and a part-time farmer, Stiles enjoys teaching history, writing and literature courses and sharing her love of the natural world, agriculture, and rural society that is an integral part of her creative work.

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Anne Simpson

Anne Simpson has been a writer-in-residence at the University of British Columbia, the Saskatoon Public Library, the Medical Humanities Program at Dalhousie University, and the University of New Brunswick, among others. She has also been a faculty member at the Banff Centre.

She writes novels, poetry, and essays. Four of her ten books have been Globe & Mail Best Books. Her short fiction has been awarded the Journey Prize, while her third novel, Speechless, won the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Her second poetry collection, Loop, was awarded the Griffin Poetry Prize. She has also written two books of essays. The Marram Grass: Poetry and Otherness explores poetry, art, and empathy, while Experiments in Distant Influence: Notes and Poems looks at friendship, courage, and community.

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Lorri Neilsen Glenn

Lorri Neilsen Glenn is the author and editor of fourteen books of poetry, creative nonfiction and scholarly work. Her latest books include The Old Moon in Her Arms: Women I Have Known and Been (Nimbus, 2024), a hybrid memoir about age and identity, and an updated edition of Threading Light: Explorations in Loss and Poetry (Nimbus, 2024, first published in 2011), essays on grief.

Following the River: Traces of Red River Women, a mixed-genre historical memoir published late in 2017 (Wolsak and Wynn) is now in its third printing. The book explores Lorri’s Métis and Cree grandmothers’ lives and was short-listed for the Evelyn Richardson Nonfiction award and won The Miramichi Reader’s award for nonfiction.

Untying the Apron: Daughters Remember Mothers of the 1950s (Guernica Editions, 2013) explores the lives of 1950s mothers (now in its third printing). Other works include Lost Gospels (Brick Books, 2010), Combustion (Brick Books, 2007), Saved String (Rubicon Press, 2007), All the Perfect Disguises (Broken Jaw Press, 2003), and several academic titles. With Carsten Knox, Lorri edited Salt Lines, a collection of writers’ wisdom from Nova Scotian authors.

Since 2013, Lorri has served as a mentor in The University of King’s College MFA program in creative nonfiction and is Professor Emerita at Mount Saint Vincent University.

Workshops: Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, Great Blue Heron workshop, St. Peter’s Writing Program, Los Parronales Writers’ Retreat, Creative Nonfiction Collective, MSVU, The University of Auckland, Edith Cowan, James Cook, Queensland, and Murdoch Universities, among other organizations and locations.

Lorri’s workshops on memoir/life writing grief and loss have been held across Canada, including Northern Canada, as well as in Ireland, Greece, Chile, Australia, and New Zealand. She has worked with writers in Indigenous communities, government and social services, educators, engineers, lawyers, women’s groups, youth groups, and many other communities. Lorri works as a developmental editor for others’ memoir, creative nonfiction and poetry.

As Halifax’s first Métis Poet Laureate (2005-2009), Lorri worked with new Canadians, seniors, and launched the spoken word youth group Wordfishing. She has worked extensively with writers who are new Canadians. In 2023, Lorri was awarded Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee medal for her work in the writing community. Lorri’s poetry has been adapted several times for libretti and was most recently performed in the City of Song celebration for Winnipeg’s 150th anniversary. Lorri was burn in Winnipeg, raised on the prairies and moved to Nova Scotia in 1983.

A frequent reader/juror/judge for national and regional writing awards, Lorri was President of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (2020-21) and has served four terms on its board over the years. She is a member of the Writers’ Union of Canada, the League of Canadian Poets, and the Creative Nonfiction Collective. Lorri’s poetry and creative nonfiction appear in several anthologies including Bad Artist, Sharp Notions, Good Mom on Paper, Sweetwater, Love me True, among others.

Reviews of The Old Moon in Her Arms can be found here:

https://freefallmagazine.ca/review-of-lorri-neilsen-glenns-the-old-moon-in-her-arms/https://freefallmagazine.ca/review-of-lorri-neilsen-glenns-the-old-moon-in-her-arms/

https://miramichireader.ca/2024/04/the-old-moon-in-her-arms-by-lorri-neilsen-glenn/

“A gift of storytelling magic” — Shelagh Rogers

Threading Light:

“Glenn explores questions about spirituality and place – places including the Prairies, where she was raised, and the East Coast, where she now works – in these stunning poems that show us how to pay attention and find the wonder in song and nature.” – Prairie Books Now

“lyricism at its most brilliant” – The Malahat Review

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Anna Quon

Middle -aged, mixed-race and Mad, Kjipuktuk (Halifax) writer Anna Quon got a late start as a novelist and poet. And though she’s travelled as far as Russia and the Czech Republic to work on her writing, she’s still not sure she’s got the hang of it.

Happily, her novel fist novel Migration Songs found a home with Invisible Publishing and was released in the Fall of 2009. Her second novel, Low, followed in 2013; and in 2022, Invisible published her third novel Where the Silver River End, making a trilogy with her first two unrelated stories by bringing their main characters together in Bratislava, Slovakia

As well as working with traditional publishers, Anna enjoys making her own poetry books and has self-published an adult colouring book, Kindness. in 20017. She also loves to make short animated films of her poetry, including in 2020 her climate grief poem, Polar Bear, thanks to a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts . Her first professionally published chapbook of poetry Body Parts was released in the Spring of 2021 by Gaspereau Press.

Before she decided to call herself a writer, Anna held a number of different jobs, including day care teacher, fundraiser/ outreach coordinator for a shelter for victims of family violence, volunteer coordinator of a disability organization, and communications assistant for a provincial not-for-profit. She currently facilitates a writers’ group and an arts-related guest speaker series for local mental health organizations. Anna hopes the jobs title of novelist, poet, filmmaker and writing workshop facilitator will stick longer than any of them.

For samples of her writing check out her blog, https://annaquon.wordpress.com/

Find examples of her visual art at https://ekeandutterarts.ca/ and check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YP_kjrslJbw&t=66s

for an example of one of her poem films.

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Jill MacLean

Jill MacLean writes to stretch her limits and engage her curiosity. She writes to communicate, to be read. She writes because she loves being inhabited by characters and intertwining their stories in a balance of the intuitive and the rational, not always knowing where she’s going but steered by what feels true.

She has an honours degree in biology and is a keen naturalist. Her masters degree in theological studies, an agnostic’s search for answers, made her questions more sophisticated and encouraged her to write poetry. Her collection, The Brevity of Red (2003), was shortlisted for two awards. Poetry, she’s been told, requires the least number of best words, a good discipline for any writing.

While living in Prince Edward Island, she spent three years researching an 18th century French settlement. Her biography of Jean Pierre Roma, published by the PEI Heritage Foundation, was reissued in 2005.

Her grandson’s request that she write him a book led to three middle-grade novels and two young adult, four awards and numerous nominations, four of them international. Her YA novel, Home Truths, is on the Nova Scotia school curriculum.

She has participated in Writers in the Schools, Word on the Street, the Literacy for Life Conference, the TD Book Tour, Read by the Sea and a conference for the International Board on Books for Young People (IBBY) in London, England. She’s conducted workshops, school presentations and readings, many for the Canada Council, across the country.

She’s hiked the High Arctic tundra and the rainforests of St. Vincent, driven through a very long, one-way, unlit, water-dripping tunnel in the Faroe Islands, kayaked Johnstone Strait and been too close to a grizzly in the Mackenzie Mountains: a strong sense of adventure, in other words. Why else, after writing five contemporary novels for young readers, would she embark on a novel for adults set in 14th century England?

That novel – several years later! – is in the process of being self-published, with the help of a company in BC. She’s hoping to to have a book in hand by late spring.

She was a palliative care volunteer for several years, and has been a dog walker for the Winnipeg Humane Society and the Nova Scotia SPCA. She can often be found in her perennial gardens, a pastime she likens to writing: you start with a rough plan, then nature takes over and you’re left to weed and transplant and weed some more, always with an eye out for interesting suprises.

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Susan McMaster

Almost a decade ago, poet Susan McMaster and her husband Ian found a beautiful summer home in Minasville on the Fundy shore, where they now spend much of each summer, returning to Ottawa each winters. Susan was the president of the League of Canadian Poets (2011-12), and is the author or editor of some 30 poetry books, anthologies, and periodicals, including recordings with First Draft, SugarBeat, and Geode Music & Poetry. Recent collections completed in Nova Scotia include Haunt>, Lizard Love: Artists scan poems by Susan McMaster, Pith & Wry: Canadian Poetry (ed.), Paper Affair: Poems Selected & New, and The Gargoyle’s Left Ear: Writing in Ottawa. Crossing Arcs: Alzheimer’s, My Mother, and Me, which both began and was finished in Minasville, was shortlisted for the the national Acorn-Plantos award and Lampman Poetry Prize, as well as the Ottawa Book Award.

Susan has presented her poetry across Canada and abroad, and broadcast on such shows as WordBeat, Go!, Richardson’s Roundup, As It Happens, and Morningside. Other projects include founding the national feminist and arts magazine Branching Out; writing “Dangerous Graces: Women’s Poetry on Stage” for the Great Canadian Theatre Company, “Dark Galaxies” for the National Arts Centre Atelier, and “Poetry in the Park,” for the summer festival in Ottawa. She organized “Convergence: Poems for Peace”, a millennial project to bring poetry and art from across Canada to all Parliamentarians in 2001. Convergence included a selection by Nova Scotian Carole Glasser Langille.

McMaster enjoys collaboration, and her poetry has inspired works by many artists and composers. She is grateful for a warm welcome into the Nova Scotia literary world through readings arranged by Marc Petersen at the Acoustic Maritime Music Festival (with bassist Alrick Huebener), Heather Pyrcz at Acadia University, Jeannette Lynes at St Francis-Xavier, David Rimmington at the Seahorse Tavern, Susan Sweet and Gwen Frankton at Galley 215, Doris Hagmann at the Avon Emporium, Kelly Bingham at Bing’s Eatery, the jams at the Minasville Community Centre and elsewhere, and Scott Rines and Kennetcook School. In 2006, Susan read her poem, written 25 years earlier, “Today, I turned everything around” and drank a glass of champagne with neighbours and friends and the crew who had just lifted her house up with two cranes, moved it 80 feet, and turned it around so 12 of 17 windows now open to views of the sea.

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Joanne Merriam

Joanne Merriam is a science fiction writer, poet, and editor. Her debut novel, Aether and Ego (Inanna Publications, 2026), is a steampunk retelling of Pride and Prejudice with the addition of space travel, dogs, and accidental death.

A former staff member of WFNS (1997-2001), she used to write a regular column for WFNS’ Eastword called “Caught in the Web.” In 2001, she left her position as Executive Assistant of WFNS to travel Canada by train, and then parts of the Northeastern and Southern United States. Her book of poetry, The Glaze from Breaking (Stride, 2005; Upper Rubber Boot, 2011), was written, in part, about those travels. In 2004, she immigrated to the USA, residing primarily in Nashville, Tennessee. From 2011 to 2019, she was the Publisher at Upper Rubber Boot Books, which is now on permanent hiatus. URB published numerous anthologies, perhaps most notably the first English-language anthology of solarpunk, Sunvault: Stories of Solarpunk & Eco-Speculation (eds. Phoebe Wagner and Bronté Wieland). She became an American citizen in 2019, and returned to Nova Scotia in 2024.

Her poetry and fiction has appeared in dozens of magazines and periodicals including The Antigonish Review, Asimov’s Science Fiction, Canadian Literature, Feux chalins, The Fiddlehead, Pottersfield Portfolio, and Strange Horizons, as well as the anthologies Ice: new writing on hockey and To Find Us: Words and Images of Halifax.

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Carol Moreira

Novelist, journalist, editor, poet

Carol is a multi-genre novelist and a prize-winning journalist. She has published four young adult novels, three adult novels, and has a soon-to-be-released fantasy for adults. She is a contributor to the non-fiction immigration anthology Coming Here, Being Here (Guernica Editions).

Inside Information, Carol’s most recent novel for older teens, was published by Hippie Hill Press in August 2023. Riptides, a novel for younger teens, was published by Moose House Publications in 2021. Membrane, her YA fantasy, was first published by Fierce Ink Press in July, 2013 and has recently been re-issued by Hippie Hill Press. Her YA novel, Charged, was published by James Lorimer in 2008.

Carol is also the author of three adult novels: Too Good, published by Hippie Hill in 2023, Culture Shock, published by Hippie Hill in 2024 and The Pet-Sit, published by Hippie Hill in 2025. Her adult fantasy, Terminal Indicators, will be published by Hippie Hill in 2026. She is one of more than 20 writers to participate in a group novel-writing adventure called Less Than Innocent published by Moose House in 2022.

UK-born Carol has also worked as a magazine and newspaper reporter and editor in Canada, England and Asia. She is a former editor of Celtic Life International magazine and is currently a partner in the Atlantic Canadian business news site www.entrevestor.com.

Carol has an English degree from London University and also studied Mandarin Chinese in Taipei, Shanghai and London’s Ealing School of Languages.

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Philip Moscovitch

I am a freelance writer, editor, and audio producer with a passion for tellng stories.

My book Adventures in Bubbles and Brine (Formac, 2019) explores Nova Scotia fermentation traditions (everything from craft beer to sauerkraut) and the people reviving and reinventing them. Mollie Katzen, author of The Moosewood Cookbook and The Heart of the Plate, says it is a “beautifully written book – which is at once a travel memoir, a weave of lore, histories, and personal tales, and an inspiring recipe collection.” Author and fermentation revivalist Sandor Katz (The Art of Fermentation) calls it “a beautiful window into the culture of fermentation in Nova Scotia! Philip Moscovitch introduces us to old timers carrying on traditions, and to leaders of the province’s contemporary fermentation revival.”

I have been publishing non-fiction for more than 25 years. My work has appeared in dozens of publications, including The Walrus, Saltscapes, Reader’s Digest, The Globe and Mail, The Gazette (Montreal), Halifax Magazine, East Coast Living, The Halifax Examiner, DAL Magazine, The Coast, Atlantic Books Today, My Halifax Experience, American Craft, Atlantic Co-operator, Canadian Co-operator, Tablet, Best Health, Shambhala Sun, Concordia Magazine, Maroon and White (SMU), Queen’s Alumni Review, York U Magazine, Equinox (remember Equinox?), Farm Credit Canada Express, OpenFile, Optimyz, Canadian Screenwriter, Playback, The Big Frame, Canadian Bar Association National magazine, Les carrières de l’ingénierie, and Les carrières du droit.

I have contributed essays to the non-fiction books Dogs With Jobs, Saltlines, and Look Ahead, Get Ahead: Growing Career Opportunities for Technicians and Technologists (this one was a lot more fun than it sounds).

For five years, I was the editor of Canadian Screenwriter magazine, and I’ve been a writer and story editor for several documentaries. As an audio producer, my work has aired both regionally and nationally on CBC Radio.

While my focus is mostly non-fiction, I have also published short fiction and poetry, and for 14 years I wrote the beloved Daisy Dreamer comic for Chickadee magazine.

My interests are broad. I’ve written about everything from professional wrestling to mental health, and from food to art. My short feature Small-town Smackdown,written for The Walrus, was a National Magazine Award finalist.

I recently graduated from the University of King’s College MFA in Creative Non-fiction program, and am working on a book about new understandings of serious mental illness, as well as a longer upper-elementary fantasy graphic novel series.

In addition to my work in fiction and non-fiction, I am also available to write for organizations in the corporate, government, and non-profit sectors. My clients have included the National Film Board, the Canadian Labour Congress, and numerous independent film producers.

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