WITS grades 10-12

Kate Inglis

KATE INGLIS is an author living on the south shore of Nova Scotia. Her fourth book, Notes for the Everlost: A Field Guide to Grief won the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Literary Award. She also writes children’s fiction, including award-nominated novels — her fifth and most recent picture book, A Great Big Night was awarded a Kirkus star and was nominated for the national David Booth Children’s and Youth Poetry Award. Kate’s work has been featured in poetry anthologies, and she also co-authored a best-selling book on the craft of photography.

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Natalie Corbett

Natalie Corbett Sampson grew up in the big city and moved to Nova Scotia to attend Acadia University where she met a boy. She completed post graduate studies at Dalhousie University and became a Speech Language Pathologist. Now Natalie’s day job as an SLP allows her the opportunity to work with awesome kids and their families, while her rest-of-the-time job lets her release pent up creativity and frustration by pounding the Mac keys to create alternate truths.

Natalie’s books include: Game Plan (2013), Aptitude (2015), It Should Have Been a #GoodDay (2016) and Take These Broken Wings (2017). All four novels have been well received and graciously reviewed. Another book is always in the works. When she’s not working or writing Natalie spends hours on Halifax roads chauffeuring her four budding athletes and musicians to their ecclectic activities.

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Alison Smith

Alison Smith is the author of three books of poetry and one chapbook from Gaspereau Press. Her most recent collection, This Kind of Thinking Does No Good, was awarded the 2019 J.M. Abraham Award for Atlantic Poetry and was shortlisted for the 2020 Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award. She has written for radio, the stage, and has taught poetry workshops in prison, schools and other community settings. Alison lives in Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia.

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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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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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Marjorie Simmins

Marjorie Simmins is the author of four non-fiction titles: Coastal Lives (2014); Year of the Horse (2016), Memoir: Conversations and Craft (2020), and Somebeachsomewhere: The Harness Racing Legend from a One-Horse Stable (2021).

Simmins began her career as a freelance journalist in Vancouver, appearing regularly in the Vancouver Sun and writing for trade magazines. She also published numerous essays and articles in magazines and newspapers across Canada, and in the United States, and has stories in Canadian and American anthologies. She has won a Gold Medal at the National Magazine Awards for “One-of-a-Kind Journalism,” and two Gold Medals at the Atlantic Journalism Awards for Best Atlantic Magazine Article, and in Arts and Entertainment, Any Medium.

In November 2020, she was awarded the prestigious Established Artist Recognition Award by Arts Nova Scotia.

Among the magazines Simmins has written for are: Canadian Living, Magazines Canada, United Church Observer, Halifax Magazine, Progress, Atlantic Business, and Saltscapes. She is a regular reviewer for The Antigonish Review and Atlantic Books Today. She has also written feature interviews for The Reporter, the community newspaper in Port Hawkesbury, NS.

Marjorie Simmins has a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from the University of British Columbia, a Certificate in Adult Education from Dalhousie University, and a Research Master of Arts in Literacy Education, at Mount Saint Vincent University. She teaches memoir writing across Canada, at venues such as at the UBC Alumni Centre, in Vancouver, BC (2016); at StoryFest, in Hudson, QC (2017); at Thinkers Lodge, Pugwash, NS (2014-2019); and the Fortress of Louisbourg, NS (2019). Recently, she has begun to teach coast to coast (still waiting for the north coast!) Zoom workshops.

In September 2020, Simmins took part in the Cabot Trail Writers Festival, as a panellist and workshop leader. The following spring of 2021, Simmins was honoured to serve as a reader for the 2021 CBC Non-Fiction Prize.

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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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donalee Moulton

donalee Moulton has been writing professionally for over 25 years. Her byline has appeared in more than 100 magazines and newspapers throughout North America – and beyond. Among the publications donalee has written for are The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine, Maclean’s, Canadian Business and The National Post.

donalee Moulton’s first mystery book Hung out to Die was published in 2023. A historical mystery, Conflagration!, was published in 2024. It won the 2024 Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense (Historical Fiction). donalee has two new books in 2025, Bind and Melt, the first in a new series, the Lotus Detective Agency.

A short story “Swan Song” was one of 21 selected for publication in Cold Canadian Crime. It was shortlisted for an Award of Excellence. Other short stories have been published in numerous anthologies and magazines. donalee’s short story “Troubled Water” was shortlisted for a 2024 Derringer Award and a 2024 Award of Excellence from the Crime Writers of Canada.

As well, donalee is the author of the non-fiction book The Thong Principle: Saying What You Mean and Meaning What You Say, and co-author of Better Policy | Better Performance: The Who, Why, and What of Organizational Policy and Celebrity Court Cases: Trials of the Rich and Famous.

donalee has had poetry published in Arc Poetry Journal, Queen’s Quarterly, Prairie Fire, The Dalhousie Review, Atlantis, South Shore Review, Carousel, and Whetstone, among others. She is a former editor of The Pottersfield Portfolio and Atlantic Books Today.

donalee is a teacher. She has taught writing, editing, grammar and communications for the past 20 years in a variety of programs. She currently teaches numerous writing and editing courses as part of the Executive and Professional Development program at Saint Mary’s University, and has taught courses at Dalhousie University and Mount Saint Vincent University.

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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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