Poetry (children’s) – Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia

Mireille Messier

Mireille Messier is a Montreal-born, Ottawa-raised and now Nova Scotia-based children’s author with a background in theatre and broadcasting. She has published over thirty picture books and chapter books, some in French, some in English. Some have even won awards!

When she is not writing books, Mireille works in children’s television as a scriptwriter for various programs. She also enjoys doing translation and corporate writing of youth-oriented material for such clients as the Dairy Farmers of Canada, General Mills, Scholastic Canada, TFO, Kraft Foods and Via Rail.

On average, Mireille gives one hundred in-person and virtual school presentations per year to French, French immersion and English groups across Canada.

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Janice Walsh-Cruddas

“Play” is one of Janice Walsh-Cruddas’ favourite words and learning tools and she incorporates it in her writing, teaching, and performance for children and young adults. Her book, Bird’s the Word!, has elicited giggles, questions, and yays from hundreds of budding wonders. She has written and directed over 20 plays, including the NS Human Rights Commission’s award-winning project ARC (Action, Responsibility, Choice), The Kerplunk in the Kingdom, and the Atlantic Fringe Festival hit, A Wee Drop of Aesop. As a children’s programmer with Halifax Public libraries for over 20 years, a former co-host of the radio show “Music for Young Earth Citizens” (with her 6-year-old son), and the founder of MITE Theatre, “Jan-Jan” has helped youth discover delight in Shakespeare, singing, theatre games, and the joyful act of communicating. She is humbled and grateful to be a Treaty person who writes, sings, reads, and plays in Punamu’kwati’jk (Dartmouth, Nova Scotia.)

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Sue MacLeod

Sue MacLeod is the author of one YA novel, Namesake, and three poetry collections. Since 2022 she has been working on picture book manuscripts. In 2024 she was a picture book mentee with Whale Rock Workshops, won an Arts Nova Scotia grant to write a picture book trilogy about lighthouse children, and placed as a finalist in a US-based contest, PBParty. In 2025 she signed with an agent, Abigail Samoun of Red Fox Literary. Her debut picture book (soon to be announced) will be published in fall 2027.

Sue has made her home in Halifax, where she was the city’s first poet laureate (2001 to 2005) and in Toronto and Montreal. She has read from her work across Canada and has taught creative writing at Dalhousie University, the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Quebec Writers’ Federation.

Her poems have been described as “necessary and cherishable” (George Elliott Clarke); and Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang, writing in Open Book Toronto, said, “I wandered around town quoting her poetry out loud to myself until I noticed how many people crossed the street to avoid me.” Reviewing Sue’s YA novel, Canadian Children’s Book News wrote, “without a misstep .. this book is a gem” and CM Magazine agreed: “In every way, this book is a triumph.”

Sue now lives in south end Halifax, working on new picture book manuscripts and taking frequent strolls along the boardwalk.

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Camilla Thompson

Camilla Thompson is an author, educator and storyteller on a mission to improve mental health education and literacy across Canada. As the director of Sunnyside Self Wellness and author of Skating Late, Camilla introduces people of all ages and abilities to writing and wellness practices proven to increase peace, positivity, health and happiness, and shares inspiring stories of hope determination and community involvement.

Camilla’s debut book, Skating Late, is a work of Canadiana in children’s literature that features a confident and creative gender neutral fox that all Canadian kids can relate to. Parents, teachers and grandparents will love to read this tale aloud, but it is best enjoyed when recited by the author during class visits and community events.

“After sleeping in and waking up to a Canadian conundrum, Skating Late to school is the only solution. Facing some slippery situations along the way, is it possible to make it on time? Skating Late is a fast paced adventure full of danger, dread and determination! Strap on your skates, buckle your helmet, and prepare yourself for a wild ride!”

As a dynamic educator and entertaining storyteller with a passion for whole self wellness and mental health education, Camilla is excited to visit classrooms and communities across Canada sharing her Sunnyside stories and introducing the writing and wellness practices that have been life enriching at her best times and life saving during her most difficult trials.

Camilla is a disability entrepreneur returning to the workforce after her career was interrupted by kidney disease and the Covid 19 pandemic. During her three year healing hiatus, Camilla dedicated herself to her writing and studies. She wishes to thank The Halifax Humanities Society for offering free education in the humanities to Nova Scotians who face barriers to traditional education. This life changing educational opportunity is based on The Foundation Year Programme offered by the University of King’s College, and is is made possible by the generosity of local professors who donate their time and tutelage to help participants develop as writers, speakers and thinkers.

Camilla’s second book, Canada’s Ocean Letdown, is the story of a Come From Away grandchild who has an unfortunate introduction to the shores of Nova Scotia when they are stung by a jellyfish, attacked by swarm of mosquitoes and have to eat a peanut butter and SAND sandwich picnic for lunch. Her storytelling performances of this tale are receiving lots of laughs across the province. It will be illustrated by Canadiana artist Bonnie Lemaire and published in March of 2024.

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John J. Guiney Yallop

John J. Guiney Yallop is a Two-Spirited writer and academic. His writing and research includes poetic inquiry and narrative inquiry. John is interested in stories of lived experience, identities, emotions, communities and gratitude. His most recent book is OUT of Place.

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Briana Corr Scott

Briana was born in Salem Massachusetts in 1981.

She made her first picture book in 1988 for a contest, at the age of seven. Her incredible first grade teacher, Mrs. Chronholm, noticed how much she loved to draw and write and encouraged her to enter the contest. Although Briana did not win, she experienced a process that has stayed with her into adulthood.

In 2013, Briana reconnected with this childhood dream while drawing with her children at the kitchen table. She had been working as a fine artist since her graduation from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2005. As the primary care giver for her growing family, she felt an increased constraint on the time she had to make her large still life oil paintings. This frustration, combined with two bouts of postpartum depression, landed her in a deep artist’s block in 2010.

In 2013, something shifted. She drew a paper doll and cut it out for her daughter to play with. This simple activity created a joy that changed the course of her life. Briana felt a reconnection with her inner child, which ignited a new energy to create and share work that was inspired by her own childhood memories. Artful play, living close to the sea and in the woods, and re-imagining fairy tales became source material for her projects. Briana started this new path by making illustrations inspired by these childhood experiences, and vowed to follow her curiosity without question from then on. She broke her three year artist’s block when she created paper dolls as art kits, and she has been designing and selling them for a decade.

Through the years, the paper dolls turned into characters for picture books, as well as puppets for stop motion animations.

Following her curiosity without question led Briana to Sable Island, which became the subject of her first paper doll picture book published by Nimbus Publishing in 2018. Since then, Briana has relied on the ideas of play and curiosity to explore other themes, and she has created the images and words for eight books with Nimbus Publishing in a short five years.

Her stop motion animation titled “The Happy Island,” combined her words, paper doll puppets, and oil painted landscapes to tell the story of how she creates her art in her new found “happy place” and was screened at the Lunenunburg Doc Fest in 2021. Her short animation called “Little Islands,” soothed the souls of lonely children after being featured on CBC during the Covid 19 pandemic. She has retold the story of Thumbelina in her picture book “Wildflower,” illustrated mermaid babies in her board book “Mermaid Lullaby,” and reimagined the “Twelve Days of Christmas.” The repeating patterns of her paper doll’s clothing and the endpapers of her books have become a line of wallpaper. Her second picture book titled “The Book of Selkie”, was short listed for the David Booth Poetry prize for Children in 2022.

Briana has shown her work in solo and group shows in Halifax and Boston, and her illustrations have appeared internationally in online features, films and magazines. As wonderful as all this is, the best place to find her is in her happy place, wandering the shore with her paints, writing stories by the sea.

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Rachel Cooper

Rachel is a freelance writer, editor and instructor with 20+ years’ experience. Clients include fiction and memoir authors, businesses, government, not-for-profits, and universities.

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Joanne Light

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.

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Kate Inglis

KATE INGLIS is an author living on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Her fourth book, Notes for the Everlost: A Field Guide to Grief won the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Literary Award. She also writes children’s fiction, including award-nominated novels — her fifth and most recent picture book, A Great Big Night was awarded a Kirkus star and was nominated for the national David Booth Children’s and Youth Poetry Award. Kate’s work has been featured in poetry anthologies, and she also co-authored a best-selling book on the craft of photography.

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