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
K.R. Byggdin’s writing has received support from the Canada Council for the Arts and has appeared in anthologies and journals across Canada, the UK, and New Zealand. Their debut novel, Wonder World, was honed under the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia’s Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program and the Banff Centre’s Emerging Writers Intensive, and was published by Enfield & Wizenty in 2022. Born and raised on the Prairies, they now live on the East Coast where they recently completed studies in English and Creative Writing at Dalhousie University.
Sue MacLeod is the author of one YA novel, Namesake, and three poetry collections.
She has made her home in Halifax, where she was the city’s first poet laureate (2001 to 2005) and in Toronto and Montreal. Sue has read from her work across Canada and has taught creative writing at Dalhousie University, the Nova Scotia Writers’ Federation, the Art Gallery of Ontario and the Quebec Writers’ Federation. She also works as a freelance editor.
Sue’s 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. Her second YA manuscript, “Slow Dancing at the Revolution,” is currently out to publishers.
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.
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.
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.
She has embarked on writing a series of Tim Brown Mysteries, which are set (so far) on Nova Scotia’s south shore. The first, January: Code, was published in 2021. February: Curious and March: Enigma will be released in 2022.
Her debut non-fiction book, Where’s Home?, was published in the summer of 2020. Using open-ended questions in a survey, and multiple personal interviews, Jan explored the many ways Nova Scotians experience home, or wish they did. Home is not always as it seems. Or as expected. Or attainable.
Her first book of short stories, The Church of Little Bo Peep and other stories, was released in 2021. Jan’s second collection, Inquire Within, will be out summer 2022.
All books mentioned above are available from the publisher, Moose House Publications.
Her poem, “Moss Meditations” was awarded the Rita Joe Poetry Prize in the 2022 Nova Writes literary competition. Other poems were published in The Antigonish Review, and in Gathering In, an anthology published by Windywood Publishing in 2020.
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 creates sculptures from Nova Scotian sandstone, is involved in 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 small boat.
Facebook: Jan Fancy Hull / Jan Hull Stoneist;
Websites: janfancyhull.ca / thestoneist.com
Originally from Britain, Dave Beynon moved to Canada as an infant, growing up on a farm north and west of Toronto. He has been a cow milker, a short order cook, a waiter, a residence manager at the Hamilton Downtown YMCA (there’s a novel waiting to be written about those four years), a factory worker and a purveyor of fine corrugated packaging and displays.
Dave writes fiction of varying genres and lengths. His short fiction has appeared in anthologies, periodicals, on-line and in podcasts. In 2011, his novel, The Platinum Ticket was shortlisted for the inaugural Terry Pratchett Prize.
Dave co-hosted a local cable TV show called Turning Pages, an in-depth interview show that highlights authors, writing and publishing.
He lives on the South Shore and should have been living there his whole life.
His work is represented by Ed Wilson of Johnson & Alcock.
Nina is a Canadian ecologist and novelist. She worked for 25 years as an environmental consultant in the field of aquatic ecology and limnology, publishing papers and technical reports on water quality and impacts to aquatic ecosystems. Nina has written over a dozen eco-fiction, science fiction and fantasy novels. An award-winning short story writer, and essayist, Nina currently lives in Toronto where she teaches writing at the University of Toronto and George Brown College. Her book “Water Is…” (Pixl Press)—a scientific study and personal journey as limnologist, mother, teacher and environmentalist—was picked by Margaret Atwood in the New York Timesas 2016 ‘The Year in Reading’. Nina’s most recent novel is “A Diary in the Age of Water”—about four generations of women and their relationship to water in a rapidly changing world—released in June 2020 by Inanna Publications.
I’m a NEW YORK TIMES and USA TODAY Bestselling Author who gained those letters with books included in self-published box sets with like-minded writers.
I used to have a black lab at my feet when I wrote, warming up the calves. She was a good girl. I miss her. Now it’s just a cuppa tea keeping this old gal warm. Maybe someday though…
I love to read, and I love to get inside a character’s skin. I call my little ditties, fiction to the left of mainstream because they never truly match up with one perfect genre. Still want a label? I got em. Urban Fantasy, Historical Fantasy, LitFic with dark themes, grimdark dystopian…But I really just write what I like, and am always looking for the next character to populate my ever growing list of series.
I’ve published in lit journals and print publications; delivered workshops; and sat on a writers panel with the likes of Patricia Briggs and Guy Gavriel Kay and found both of them to be amazingly authentic human beings.
I seek out opportunities to speak to new writers and deliver workshops on fiction writing, plotting, publishing, and using technology.
To date, HalCon SciFi Con in 2019 was the highlight of my author career.
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
