Fiction (short stories)

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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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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Adele Megann

Adele Megann is a Newfoundlander based in Halifax. Her short fiction has been published in Canadian and US periodicals and anthologies. She has won several awards–including the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award–and has given many readings and interviews. She has been told that her accent is charming. She thinks everyone else’s accents are charming.

Adele lived several years in Calgary, where she was part of the Pack of Liars writing workshop, and she was a fiction editor of Dandelion magazine. Over the years, Adele has been involved in the writing community by organizing readings, and teaching and judging creative writing.

After returning eastwards by moving to Nova Scotia in 1999, Adele became acquainted with her new home by participating in Writers in the Schools throughout the province. She performed at Playwrights in Performance Cabarets. She coordinated school matinees and wrote curriculum guides for Exodus Theatre Society.

In addition to her literary publications, she has also contributed several articles to an Irish magazine called Set Dancing News.

Adele’s day jobs usually involve teaching. She has taught diverse subjects–including music, drama and literacy–to children and adults, including those with disabilities. She sings, and plays several instruments, usually in the context of traditional Irish music. She lives with an assortment of humans and animals.

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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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Carole Glasser Langille

Carole Glasser Langille is the author of 5 books of poetry, 2 collections of short stories, 2 children’s books and a non-fiction book “Doing Time: Writing Workshops in Prison.”

Her second book of poetry, In Cannon Cave, was nominated for a Governor General’s Award in 1997, and the Atlantic Poetry Prize in 1998. “I Am What I Am Because You Are What You Are,” her second collection of short stories, was nominated for the Alistair MacLeod Award for Short Fiction. Her children’s book, Where the Wind Sleeps, was the Canadian Children’s Book Center Choice in 1996.

Several selections from Carole Glasser Langille’s book of poetry, Late In A Slow Time, have been adapted to music by renowned Canadian composer Chan Ka Nin. The production, also called Late In A Slow Time debuted at the 2006 Sound Symposium in St. John’s, Newfoundland and will be on Duo Concertante’s forthcoming CD.

Originally from New York City, where she studied with the poets John Ashbery and Carolyn Forche among others, Carole now lives in Black Point, Nova Scotia.

She has taught at The Humber School for Writing Summer Program, Maritime Writer’s Workshop, the Community of Writers in Tatamagouche, and at Women’s Words the University of Alberta. She has taught Creative Writing at Mount Saint Vincent University, Writing for the Arts at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and currently teaches Creative Writing: Poetry at Dalhousie University.

Carole has given poetry readings in Athens, Delhi, Prague, London England, New York City, Kirkcudbright Scotland, and throughout Canada. She has received Canada Council Grants for poetry, non-fiction and fiction as well as Nova Scotia Cultural Arts grants for poetry and fiction.

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Kathy-Diane Leveille

Kathy-Diane Leveille is a former broadcast journalist with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, who discovered the only thing more thrilling than reading a great suspense novel is trying to write one. Her short story collection, Roads Unravelling (Sumach Press), was published to critical acclaim after a selection from its pages Learning to Spin was adapted to radio drama for CBC’s Summer Drama Festival. The tale Showdown at the Four Corner’s Corral was revised for the stage and performed by New City Theater in Saint John. Her debut suspense novel, Let the Shadows Fall Behind You, was published by Kunati Books April 2009. Standing in the Whale’s Jaw followed in 2013 from Tightrope Books. She is a member of Sisters in Crime, Crime Writers of Canada and the TWUC.

Kathy-Diane’s prose has been published in a number of literary journals including Grain, Room of One’s Own, Oklahoma Review, Pottersfield Portfolio and The Cormorant, as well as various anthologies such as Water Studies: New Voices in Maritime Fiction (Pottersfield Press) and New Brunswick Short Stories (Neptune). Along with being awarded numerous Canada Council Art Grants, Kathy-Diane’s fiction won the Short Grain Contest (dramatic monologue) in 2000 and was listed as a finalist in the Writers’ Union of Canada Short Fiction Contest in 2002. Her poetry received Honorable Mention in the Stephen Leacock International Poetry Competition. A humorous commentary I Know What You Didn’t Do Last Summer aired on CBC’s national morning show with Shelagh Rogers.

“Her settings and characters – their hopes and fears, verbal and behavioural ticks, even their smells – are keenly observed.” – The Globe and Mail

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Bretton Loney

Bretton Loney is a novelist and non-fiction writer who has published three novels and one biography. His 2015 biography, Rebel With A Cause: The Doc Nikaido Story, and his first novel, The Last Hockey Player, a dystopian story published in 2018, were nominated for Whistler Independent Book Awards.

In 2022 he published the novel Joe Howe’s Ghost, a paranormal political thriller.

In 2025 Bretton independently published his third novel, Unsettling Time, a murder mystery set in 1749 amid the first days of the new colony of Halifax.

Bretton is a native of Bow Island, Alberta and has undergraduate degrees from the University of Lethbridge and the University of King’s College in Halifax. He lives in Halifax with his wife, Karen Shewbridge.

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Josh MacDonald (he/him)

JOSH MacDONALD (he/him) is the writer of a theatrical adaptation for Robert Cormier’s classic novel I Am The Cheese. This adaptation is the winner of a Playwrights Guild of Canada Tom Hendy Prize, as well as a Theatre Nova Scotia Merritt Award for Outstanding Adaptation. Josh is also the writer of the stage plays Halo, Whereverville and The Mystery Play, which have been produced here at home and around North America, are published by Talonbooks, and are curriculum titles in high schools and universities. Josh is the winner of an AMD/Dell “Next Wave” Award for Best Screenplay from Fantastic Fest in Austin, TX, for his horror movie The Corridor (IFC Films). He is also the writer of the feature comedy Faith, Fraud & Minimum Wage (eOne Films). Josh writes for series television, is an actor for stage and screen, and has taught playwriting and screenwriting courses for Dalhousie University and the Nova Scotia College of Art & Design (NSCAD).

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Virginia MacIsaac

Virginia writes from a coastal perch about the character of Atlantic Canada, it’s people and places. She writes about Nova Scotia’s rich heritage – of challenges and celebrations, revealing pieces from the past that fit together, or sometimes don’t fit, that will open windows to the now. Connecting historical and current, articles and features, poetry and back-of-the-book indexes, and collaborating with other writers, rounds out her non-fiction. She contributes articles to a column at the Inverness Oran and has a short story published. You might hear her several times a year as a community correspondent on CBC radio. At other times she’s an archivist at a cultural centre and is a member of the Shean Poets & Writers.

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