Fiction (short stories)

Renée Hartleib

Renée Hartleib is an author, writer, and writing mentor based out of Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Her greatest passion is to help others connect with themselves and bring their creative dreams to life. Her first book, Writing Your Way: A 40-Day Path of Self-Discovery, was published in 2022. And her second book, Solo Camino: An Empowering Guide for Women was published in 2025.

As a writing mentor, Renée considers it an honour to work one-on-one with writers who are completing book drafts or who require a sensitive and thorough review of completed manuscripts.

Renée has also worked as a professional writer and editor for nearly 20 years. Her client list is long and has included the CBC, the National Film Board, the IWK Health Centre, Farmers Cooperative Dairy Limited, The Shaw Group, Saint Mary’s University, and Dalhousie University.

If you join Renée’s online community, you’ll receive inspiring blog posts on a variety of topics.

As a current member of the WFNS Board of Directors and a graduate of both the Humber School of Writers and the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program, Renée is proud to be part of the vibrant writing community of Atlantic Canada.

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Alison DeLory

Alison DeLory is a writer, editor, publisher, teacher, and consultant in Halifax.

She’s the author of an adult novel called Making it Home (Vagrant/Nimbus Publishing, 2019); two children’s chapter books called Lunar Lifter (Bryler Publications, 2012) and Scotia Sinker (Sketch Publishing, 2015), and a story in the YA creative non-fiction anthology Becoming Fierce: Teen Stories IRL (Fierce Ink, 2014).

Alison has written news, feature stories and essays for publications including The Globe and Mail, Chicago Tribune, Chatelaine, Today’s Parent, Ryerson Magazine, Dalhousie Magazine, Medical Post, Halifax Magazine, and Canadian Traveler.

Alison was a finalist twice in the Atlantic Writing Competition and won prizes for her blog and poetry at Mount Saint Vincent University. She served as a judge for the 2017 Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award and as a reader for the 2016 CBC Creative Nonfiction Prize. She’s been a presenting author twice at Word on the Street Halifax (2015 and 2019).

She has two degrees from Mount Saint Vincent University including a masters of public relations, and was editor of the alumni magazine Folia Montana there for four years. Her third degree is from Ryerson University in journalism.

Alison has been a part-time instructor at Mount Saint Vincent University in communication studies since 2013. She’s also taught at the Nova Scotia Community College and taught workshops through the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS). She participated in the WFNS Writers In The Schools program from 2009 to 2017, bringing writing workshops into more than 50 classrooms province-wide. Alison has served as council member at the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) since 2009.

Alison enjoys working with emerging authors on their manuscripts, and also performs substantive, structural and copy-editing for various clients including creative writers, business writers, and academics.

She is currently the Associate Director of Communications for the University of King’s College where she writes content for print and digital publications, and is editor of the alumni newsletter and Tidings Magazine.

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Cindy Etter-Turnbull

Cindy Etter-Turnbull was born on November 24th, 1960 in Windsor Nova Scotia. After growing up in the village of Brooklyn, Hants County and educated in the West Hants school system, Cindy went on to further her university education at Mount Saint Vincent and Acadia. This was interrupted when the first of her two sons came along. With this new focus on raising her own young family, Cindy also started what turned out to be a twenty year career mentoring mentally challenged adults, both very rewarding jobs.

After a brief retirement, Cindy unexpectedly found herself writing her first book. Her outgoing personality, keen sense of humour, creativity and determination led to Fine Lines, a celebration of clothesline culture. A natural letter writer, avid gardener, and feisty fisherperson, Cindy also enjoys crewel embroidery, home decorating (or moving furniture all the time!) and community volunteer work. She is currently working on a play and a children’s book.

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Gwen Davies

Gwen Davies writes short stories and novels and the occasional essay. In 2000 she founded the acclaimed writing retreat Community of Writers, a summer retreat at the Tatamagouche Centre. She teaches creative writing at the Nova Scotia Community College and in private workshops and retreats, and particularly enjoys working with new writers. She earns a living as a consultant in clear language and design, and boosts her spirit doing parkour — check out this video on Halifax parkour [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEZLdVbD56E].

Gwen grew up as an Air Force Brat, moving with her strange and interesting family around Ontario and France and exploring Europe with them in a VW camper. She graduated from Wilfird Laurier with a BA Honours in English and later from King’s with a BJ and holds an Adult Education Certificate from the Tatamagouche Centre. Over the years she has taught high school English, worked with health food, written stories for magazines and newspapers including The Globe and Mail, and worked in community development and various types of consulting. For many years, she earned her living editing public materials (like the NS Power Bill and the Youth Criminal Justice Act) into language that was clear and accessible to its intended audience.

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Binnie Brennan

Binnie Brennan is the author of three books of fiction, Like Any Other Monday (Gaspereau Press), A Certain Grace and Harbour View (Quattro Books).

Co-winner of the 2009 Quattro Books’ Ken Klonsky Novella Contest, Binnie has also been published in several literary journals. Her novella, Harbour View, was published in the fall of 2009; in 2010 it was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award and longlisted for a ReLit Award. Her short story collection, A Certain Grace, was published in 2012. Binnie is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers, where she was mentored by M.G. Vassanji and Alistair MacLeod.

In 2007 Binnie’s story A Spider’s Tale was adapted for the stage in Halifax, where it received critical and popular acclaim. Since 1989 Binnie has enjoyed a career playing the viola with Symphony Nova Scotia. She lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

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Carol Bruneau

Carol Bruneau is the author of eleven books: four short story collections, After the Angel Mill (1995), Depth Rapture (1998), A Bird on Every Tree (2017), shortlisted for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Dartmouth Book Award; and Threshold (2024); one nonfiction book, No Ordinary Magic: the Art of Laurie Swim (2023), shortlisted for the APA Best Book Published in Atlantic Canada Award; and six novels. These include Brighten the Corner Where You Are (2020), nominated for the IMPAQ Dublin Literary Award; A Circle on the Surface (2018), winner of the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction; These Good Hands, a novel based on the life and art of Camille Claudel; Glass Voices (2007), named a Globe and Mail Best Book, German translation Glasstimmen (2010); Berth (2005); and Purple for Sky (2000), US edition A Purple Thread for Sky (2001), winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the Dartmouth Book Award.

In numerous starred reviews, Bruneau has been praised by Quill & Quire as a master of the short story form and “a first-class storyteller who uses words magically” (Quill & Quire), and by bestselling author Lesley Crewe as “a marvel.”

Giller-Prize shortlisted author Leo McKay Jr. calls Bruneau’s most recent collection “stories of great power and insight,” and says, “Bruneau illuminates her fictional world with a light so clear and bright that in it we can see into the shadows of our own world, into the usually unuttered spaces between human action and intent, between what we mean to each other and our usually inadequate attempts to articulate that meaning. And the source of that light,” he notes, “is Bruneau’s powerfully controlled language…every sentence perfect unto its purpose.”

She has been writing since childhood; her professional writing career spans thirty years. Her stories, reviews and articles have appeared nationwide in anthologies, print and online journals and newspapers.

She has appeared at various literary festivals including TIFA (Toronto International Festival of Authors), the Vancouver Writers’ Festival, Eden Mills, the Northrop Frye Festival, the Cabot Trail Authors’ Festival, the Lunenburg Literary Festival, the Margaree Literary Festival, Read-by-the-Sea, FogLit, AfterWords Literary Festival and the Winterset Festival.

The recipient of four Canada Council grants in support of her fiction, Bruneau has been Writer in Residence at Acadia and Dalhousie Universities, and taught writing for the arts for many years at NSCAD University. Having led workshops throughout the Maritimes and mentored new and emerging writers through the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program since the program’s inception, she continues to teach workshops in fiction writing at various levels for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

Bruneau lives and works in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, Mi’kmaki/Nova Scotia.

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Wanda Campbell

Wanda Campbell was born and grew up in Andhra Pradesh, South India. She completed a Master’s Degree in Creative Writing at the University of Windsor under the supervision of Alistair MacLeod, and a PhD in Canadian Literature at the University of Western Ontario. She now teaches Creative Writing and Literature at Acadia University in Wolfville, Nova Scotia.

Wanda Campbell has published six collections of poetry, most recently Spring Theory (Pottersfield Press 2025), a title inspired by her poem “String Theory,” a finalist for the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize. Her other five collections are Kalamkari and Cordillera, Daedalus Had a Daughter, Grace, Looking for Lucy, and Sky Fishing, as well as a chapbook, Haw [Thorn]. Campbell’s debut novel Hat Girl, winner of the 2010 H.R. Percy Prize in the WFNS Atlantic Writing Competition, was published in 2013 by Signature Editions. Her work appears in several anthologies including the 2024 Montreal International Poetry Prize Anthology, Landmarks: An Anthology of New Atlantic Canadian Poetry of the Land, and Body Language, and in literary journals across Canada including Antigonish Review, Between the Lines, Contemporary Verse II, Dalhousie Review, Descant, Driftwood, existere, Fiddlehead, Gaspereau Review, Grain, Harpweaver, New Quarterly, Northern Cardinal Review, Queen’s Quarterly, Room, Vallum, Wascana Review, and Windsor Review. She has also edited books on Early Canadian Women Poets and on Bronwen Wallace. She has given readings from St. John’s to Victoria and always welcomes the opportunity to share her passion for poetry and fiction with others.

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Lesley Choyce

Lesley teaches part-time at Dalhousie University, runs Pottersfield Press and has published over 86 books for adults and kids. His Young Adult novels concern things like skateboarding, surfing, racism, environmental issues, organ transplants, and rock bands. Lesley surfs year round in the North Atlantic and is considered the father of transcendental wood-splitting. He’s worked as a rehab counsellor, a freight hauler, a corn farmer, a janitor, a journalist, a lead guitarist, a newspaper boy and a well-digger. He lives at Lawrencetown Beach overlooking the ocean. He also hosts a nationally syndicated TV talk show on Vision TV. His recent novel, Cold Clear Morning, is currently being developed as a feature length movie. In 2002, Goose Lane Editions published Choyce’s best-selling circumferential history book, The Coasts of Canada. That same year, his animal epic film, The Skunk Whisperer, was broadcast across Canada and heralded at the Maine International Film Festival. Along with the Surf Poets, he has released two poetry/music albums, Long Lost Planet and Sea Level.

To read excerpts from Lesley’s books and download free samples of his music, visit www.lesleychoyce.com.

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Ian Colford

Ian Colford is a fiction writer living in Halifax, Nova Scotia. His stories, reviews, and commentary have been widely published in print and online. From 1995 to 1998 he was editor of the literary journal Pottersfield Portfolio. He has served on the Steering Committee of One Book Nova Scotia, the board of directors of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, and the board of the Atlantic Book Awards Society. He has completed residencies at the Hawthornden Castle International Retreat for Writers and Yaddo, an artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, and is a graduate of the Humber School for Writers Summer Workshop.

Evidence, a collection of short fiction, was published in 2008 by Porcupine’s Quill and won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award; Evidence was also shortlisted for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize and the ReLit Award. A novel, The Crimes of Hector Tomás, followed in 2012. Published by Freehand Books, it won Trade Book of the Year at the 2013 Alberta Book Awards. Perfect World was published by Freehand in 2016 and shortlisted in the book design category at the 2017 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. In 2019 A Dark House, a collection of short fiction, was published under the Vagrant Press imprint of Nimbus Publishing and subsequently shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Prize in Short Fiction, the Miramichi Reader “Very Best” Books, and the Relit Awards.

In 2022 his novel, The Confessions of Joseph Blanchard, won the Guernica Prize and was published by Guernica Editions in 2023.

A collection of short fiction, Witness, is scheduled to be published in 2026 by Galleon Books of Moncton, N.B.

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Valerie Compton

Valerie Compton is the author of the novel Tide Road, a finalist for the 2012 Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Her short fiction has been published in literary journals across Canada and shortlisted for the CBC Literary Award. Her non-fiction articles and book reviews have appeared in The Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, Gourmet and elsewhere. Valerie has been leading writing workshops and mentoring writers since 2005. Visit her at http://www.narrativeagency.ca

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