WITS grades 10-12
Anne Louise O’Connell
An author, developmental book editor and partner publisher, Anne can be found working on her latest novel, mentoring other authors, publishing books or leading writing workshops. Anne’s first book, @Home in Dubai – Getting Connected Online and on the Ground, was traditionally published in the UK by Summertime Publishing (2011) and re-released by Springtime Books. Her first novel, Mental Pause launched on International Women’s Day, March 8, 2013, and won an Independent Publisher Book Award (IPPY). Her next novel, Deep Deceit, launched March 8, 2015 and is the first in a planned series called Deep Mysteries. Deep Freeze is scheduled for release March 2025. While living as an expat in Dubai and then Thailand, she was a content creator and a regular contributor to the Wall St. Journal Expat Blog and Global Living Magazine. In 2015, she also published a collection of expat and travel stories called Swimming with the Elephants and Other Adventures. Upon her return to Canada in 2016, after 23 years of expat life, she established OC Publishing in Halifax, NS.
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John A. Read
JOHN A. READ is a telescope operator at the Burke-Gaffney Observatory and a member of the Halifax Centre of the Royal Astronomical Society of Canada (RASC). He holds a degree in astrophysics from Saint Mary’s University, and is currently a Master’s Student at Johns Hopkins University. In 2020 he was presented with an RASC award for Excellence in Science Communication. John cohosted RASC’s series “Explore the Universe Online,” and is the founder of “Stargaze Nova Scotia” a designated stargazing site within the HRM. He lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Chad Lucas
Chad Lucas has been in love with words since he attempted his first novel on a typewriter in the sixth grade. He has worked as a newspaper reporter, communications advisor, freelance writer, part-time journalism instructor, and parenting columnist.
His work has appeared in publications including Halifax Magazine, Black to Business, Sport Quarterly and The Chronicle Herald, where he wrote a biweekly column, “Life With Kids,” from 2011-2016. He’s a previous Silver Award winner at the Atlantic Journalism Awards, and his short fiction has appeared in EVENT and The Dalhousie Review.
A proud descendant of the historic African Nova Scotian community of Lucasville, Chad lives with his family in Nova Scotia. His debut middle grade novel, Thanks a Lot, Universe (Amulet Books/Abrams Kids) is a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard Selection and earned praise as “heartwarming and bold” in a starred review from Kirkus Reviews and “funny and deeply empathetic” in a starred review from School Library Journal. His second middle grade novel, Let The Monster Out, releases in May 2022.
Cooper Lee Bombardier
Cooper Lee Bombardier is a queer, trans writer and visual artist living in Halifax. He is the author of the memoir-in-essays Pass With Care, a finalist for the 2021 Firecracker Award in Nonfiction. His writing appears in The Kenyon Review, The Malahat Review, Ninth Letter, CutBank, Nailed Magazine, Longreads, Narratively, BOMB, and The Rumpus; and in 18 anthologies, including the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology, The Remedy–Essays on Queer Health Issues, and Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Speculative Fiction From Transgender Writers, which won a 2018 American Library Association Stonewall Book Award. The Huffington Post listed Cooper as one of “10 Transgender Artists Who Are Changing The Landscape Of Contemporary Art.” He teaches in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at University of King’s College.
FB: cooperfrickinleee Twitter: @CooperLeeB IG: cooper_lee_bombardier
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Shelley Thompson
Shelley Thompson is an actor, screenwriter, and activist based in Wolfville, in Mi’kma’ki (NS). She trained at The Royal Academy of Drama.c Art, the Canadian Film Centre, Women in the Directors’ Chair, the New York Writers’ Lab, and the Whistler Producer’s Lab.
As an actor she’s received and been nominated for Gemini and ACTRA awards for her work in film and television, including THE TRAILER PARK BOYS, and feature films SPLINTERS, and THE CHILD REMAINS among others.
Her short films have screened internationally with the most
recent, DUCK DUCK GOOSE, winning Best Atlantic Short at FIN Halifax. It was selected by Telefilm Canada’s Not Short on Talent at Clermont-Ferrand, and was a finalist in CBC’s Short Film Faceoff.
Her first feature film, Dawn, Her Dad & The Tractor premiered at INSIDE OUT International Film Festival in Toronto,selling out in Toronto, Halifax and London. (BFI Flare) and also screened in Whistler, BC, (Nominated for the Borsos Prize) Amsterdam’s Roze Filmdagen and many others across the US, Canada and in Germany. Among many prizes and awards, the film recently won the 2022 Nova Scotia MasterWorks Award.
Thompson is working on a full slate of projects: a second novel (GALILEE JUMP), and TV and cinema projects under the banner of her emerging production company, Rusty Tractor Productions Inc.
A committed LGBTQ+2SP ally, Thompson is proud parent to singer/ songwriter T. Thomason, a trans man who inspires her, every day.
ROAR, her first novel, is being published by Nimbus/Vantage Press in Nova Scotia, in late October 2023.
Julian Smith
Julian Mortimer Smith has published more than a dozen science fiction and fantasy stories in some of the world’s top speculative fiction magazines, including Asimov’s, Terraform, Lightspeed, and Best American Science Fiction & Fantasy. His first collection, The World of Dew and Other Stories, will be published in 2021 by Indiana University Press. Julian is a member of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA) and SF Canada.
Julian lives in Yarmouth and spends his days writing copy for a web design company. He previously made a living as a freelance editor, working on projects ranging from romance novels to board games. When he lived in Edinburgh he worked as the books section editor of The Skinny, a Scottish arts and entertainment magazine.
In 2017, Julian led the “So You Want to Write Science Fiction” session at the WFNS in Halifax along with Professor Jason Hazlam. In April 2018, he led the four-week “Out of Your Head, Onto the Page” workshop at Waves of Confetti Creative Space in Yarmouth. He has also delivered workshops at schools throughout Southwest Nova as part of the Writers in the Schools program and has been an invited panel speaker at Hal-Con.
Julian has a bachelor’s degree in English literature from McGill Univeristy in Montreal and a Master’s in Communication and Culture from York University in Toronto. You can find out more about his writing at his website: http://julianmortimersmith.com/
Sarah Mian
Sarah Mian’s debut novel, When the Saints (HarperCollins), is about a dysfunctional family in rural Nova Scotia. It won the Jim Connors Book Award, the Margaret & John Savage First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. After completing the film adaption, she is currently working on a second novel, a ghost story titled, The World in Awful Sleep.