Fiction (short stories)

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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Julie Vandervoort

Julie Vandervoort writes creative non-fiction and memoir. She has worked with mentors Isabel Huggan (Humber School for Writers), Carol Bly and Philip Lopate (Vermont Studio Centre, creative non-fiction intensive) and David Carpenter (Sage Hill Writing Experience, advanced fiction program). She produced a piece called “Moving from Coping to Creating” at a national law conference and presented at the 2003 Canadian Conference of the Arts as part of the program “The Creativity Gap: How the Arts Inspire an Innovative Society”. In 2009, her essay “Measures” was chosen as a keynote presentation at the conference Imagining Amsterdam: Visions and Revisions. Julie has given many public readings across Canada and at PalabrArte in Mexico, served on grants juries, on the board of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, and as associate fiction editor of The Antigonish Review. She has worked extensively in human rights law and as an environmental activist and singer with the international Gaia Project. This project coordinated the production of a double CD in 2003 (O Beautiful Gaia: Love Songs to Earth) and a 2007 CD of music inspired by the Earth Charter (My Heart is Moved).

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Steve Vernon

Steve Vernon has been writing and telling stories for over 40 years. He’s read on CBC radio, Breakfast Television, Global Noon and at schools and libraries across Canada. Steve was a great hit with the kids at the inaugural FUNNY PAGES festival at the Halifax Central Library.

He has released five ghost stories collections, one young adult novel, one children’s picture book, and one collection of historical maritime murder tales, Maritime Murder with a second collection, More Maritime Murder due out in the fall of 2022 from local publisher Nimbus.

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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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Ryan Turner

Ryan Turner’s short stories have been published in magazines such as the The New Quarterly, The Puritan, and Prairie Fire. His latest book, Half-Sisters & Other Stories, was shortlisted for the 2020 ReLit Award, and he has a story in Best Canadian Short Stories 2024, which will be published by Biblioasis in November. He is the co-founder and co-director of the AfterWords Literary Festival in Halifax.

Half-Sisters is comprised of “lovely, humane, gentle stories…very perceptive.” — Claire Armitstead, The Guardian Books Podcast

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Norene Smiley

After graduating from NSCAD in the early 70’s, Norene worked in the not-for-profit sector with the elderly and persons with intellectual disabilities, and in the book publishing industry. She has been a bookseller, editor, writer, teacher, book reviewer, book publisher, publicist, event organizer and cultural administrator.

She belonged to a children’s writing group for over twelve years, during which two anthologies of writing for children were published. She has served on the boards of many arts organizations, regionally and nationally, primarily to do with books, writing or fine art. She was a founding member of the Nova Scotia Children’s Literature Award and the Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Children’s Literature. In 2002, she received the Mayor’s Award for Cultural Achievement in Literature.

After five years of facilitating The Word On The Street Book Festival and coordinating the Hackmatack Children’s Choice Book Award for another six, she moved to Pugwash NS where she has become involved in community development. She has been an organizer of Writing on Fire Youth Experience on the North Shore of NS and Art Jam! with Rita Wilson and Helen Castonguay since 2013. She received the Governor General’s Sovereign Medal for Volunteerism in 2019.

Besides writing for children, she is a visual artist, scriptwriter and filmmaker. In 2005/2006, she wrote, directed and edited a one-minute film, Saving the Best for Last, through the Atlantic Filmmakers Cooperative, and created a short digital mock-documentary, Urban Myths, with the help of a Media Arts Scholarship through the Centre for Art Tapes. Between 2017 and 2020, she wrote and co-produced a short film, Maurice, with collaborator Shannon Bell.

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Sherry D. Ramsey

Sherry D. Ramsey writes science fiction and fantasy for both adults and young adults, and is one of the founding editors of Cape Breton’s Third Person Press. She has published over thirty short stories nationally and internationally, and her award-winning debut novel, One’s Aspect to the Sun, launched in 2013 from Edmonton’s Tyche Books. The sequels, Dark Beneath the Moon and Beyond the Sentinel Stars (Tyche Books) followed in 2015 and 2017, and the fourth book in the Nearspace series, A Veiled and Distant Sky, released in March of 2022. She has also published the YA fantasy The Seventh Crow (Dreaming Robot Press, 2015), and the middle grade science fiction adventure, Planet Fleep (2018). Some of her short stories are collected in To Unimagined Shores (2011) and The Cache and Other Stories (2017). A collection of stories for young readers, Beacon and Other Stories, came out in 2019. She’s currently adding more titles to her urban fantasy Olympia Investigations series and working on a comic fantasy novel, as well as teaching English courses as a sessional instructor at Cape Breton University.

Sherry has co-edited six anthologies of regional short fiction with Third Person Press and conducted numerous writing workshops in person and online. A member of the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia Writer’s Council, Sherry is also a past Vice-President, Secretary-Treasurer, and Web Administrator of SF Canada. She is an active participant with Writers In The Schools and loves talking to students about writing and creativity. You can visit Sherry online, read her blog, follow her on Twitter and Instagram @sdramsey, and find some free fiction and sample chapters on her website.

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Darcy Rhyno

Darcy Rhyno writes novels, short stories, plays, non-fiction (travel, science, health, people profiles). His latest book is a memoir about life in post-communist Eastern Europe.

He is the author of the pre-teen fantasy novel set in 1950’s Halifax called THE UNDERWORLD MAGICIAN. He’s also the author of the YA novel MONSTERS OF SUBURBIA, which is a realism adventure story with themes of bullying, isolation, estrangement and myth. This novel is suitable for junior high readers. He has also published two collections of short stories, CONDUCTOR OF WAVES and HOLIDAYS. He’s been writing for Saltscapes magazine since 2007. He is an award-winning travel writer and a member of the Travel Media Association of Canada and has published hundreds of articles with Saltscapes, Canadian Geographic Travel, BBC Travel, Atlas Obscura, The Daily Beast, the Chronicle Herald and many, many more. His play Snowbirds, a comedy set at Christmas, has been produced twice in Nova Scotia.

Conductor of Waves is a collection of 12 stories set in a fictional Nova Scotia fishing community. The Globe and Mail called it “a strikingly accomplished collection.” His first novel for children placed second in the Atlantic Writing Competition. As a columnist for Saltscapes magazine, Darcy writes the back page for each issue, prepares feature articles and writes for special publications about travel, food and other topics. He writes for other magazines and newspapers as well. One of the stories in his collection called Holidays was published in The Vagrant Revue of New Fiction, an anthology of work by the most promising writers in Atlantic Canada.

For much of his career, Darcy has worked in education and with children. A teacher and arts worker by profession, he has worked with many schools and teachers across the province, as well as with artists from all genres. For 16 years, he was an instructor in the graduate program of the Faculty of Education at Mount St. Vincent University where he taught courses in popular culture, reading, media and literature. His readings and workshops are always engaging, informative and entertaining. See his website at www.darcyrhyno.com

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Elaine McCluskey

Elaine McCluskey has written three novels and four short-story collections, all set in Atlantic Canada. Rafael Has Pretty Eyes won the Alistair MacLeod Award for Short Fiction in 2023. McCluskey’s latest novel, The Gift Child, was released by Goose Lane Editions in March 2024. McCluskey has published over seventy short stories nationally and internationally. Valery the Great won the Other Voices short fiction contest; Bad Boys won the Pottersfield Portfolio contest. The Watermelon Social was a finalist for The Journey Prize and Something Pretty, Something Nice placed second in the Fish international short-story contest in Ireland. McCluskey’s stories have appeared in The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, The Dalhousie Review, Gaspereau Review, Room, Other Voices, Pottersfield Portfolio, Riddle Fence, among others. She graduated from Dalhousie and the University of Western Ontario (MA) and lives in Dartmouth, with her husband, a photojournalist. They have two children.

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Ami McKay

As a writer of fiction, essays, musical theatre, radio documentaries and dramas, Ami is a dedicated artist who brings creativity and passion to her work. With over 15 years of experience in musical theater she has scored several productions, including The Clouds, Mother Courage, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest.

She believes that the power and magic of a good story can only come through the strength of the characters, plot and place. Her work has been described as “a balance of stories – observation and internal musings, matter of factness and fancy.” Her radio documentary for the CBC, Daughter of Family G won an Excellence in Journalism Award at the 2003 Atlantic Journalism Awards and her novel, Given, was awarded second place in the 27th annual Atlantic Writing Competition.

Born in Indiana, Ami currently lives in an old farm house in Scots Bay, Nova Scotia. She’s an avid blogger and is an active member of PEN Canada as well as an Associate Editor of Fiction for The Antigonish Review.

Her first novel, The Birth House was published by Knopf Canada in 2006 as their New Face of Fiction’s 10th anniversary title (publication by Luitingh Sijthoff – Holland, and Wilhelm Goldmann Verlag -Random House Germany to follow).

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