WITS grades 7-9 – Page 2 – Writers' Federation of Nova Scotia

Suzanne Rent

Suzanne Rent has worked in the Halifax media since 2003 and has experience in newspapers, magazines, televsion, and radio. Her work has appeared in The Chronicle Herald, Halifax Magazine, East Coast Living, Halifax Examiner, Globe and Mail, Canadian Business, and many others.

She has experience mentoring students and adult learners in the writing and editing process. When she was the editor of Our Children Magazine, she created a student-correspondent program in which she mentored elementary-age students whose work was published in the magazine. In 2015, she was shortlisted for the Editors Canada Tom Fairley Award for Editorial Excellence for program.

She taught a Journalism 101 program to adult learners at the Dartmouth Literacy Network and the Bedford-Sackville Literacy Network.

Suzanne is currently working on a 10-episode radio show called The Great Nova Scotia Songbook, which will be launched in November 2018. This series will chronicle the history of music in Nova Scotia, including the music of First Nations communities to today’s hip-hop artists. To date, she’s interviewed 45 musicians and industry talents for this project.

Suzanne publishes Boating Atlantic, an annual guide for the recreational boating in Atlantic Canada.

Suzanne has a special industry in Nova Scotia history, genealogy, music, community news, and the extraordinary stories of everyday people.

Cooper Lee Bombardier

Cooper Lee Bombardier is a writer and visual artist originally from the South Shore of Boston. He has been a construction worker, a cook, a carpenter, a union stagehand, a bouncer, a welder, a shop steward, a dishwasher, a truck driver, and a housepainter, among other things, for a paycheck. His writing appears in many publications and anthologies, such as The Kenyon Review, CutBank, Nailed Magazine, and The Rumpus; and recently in the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology The Remedy–Essays on Queer Health Issues (ed. Zena Sharman) and Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Speculative Fiction From Transgender Writers, winner of the 2018 American Library Association Stonewall Book Awards Barbara Gittings Literature Award (eds. Cat Fitzpatrick and Casey Plett). The Huffington Post listed Cooper as one of “10 Transgender Artists Who Are Changing The Landscape Of Contemporary Art.” His visual art was recently curated in an exhibition called “Intersectionality” at the Museum of Contemporary Art in North Miami, and hung recently in shows at Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, NM, the National Queer Arts Festival in San Francisco, and at Helltown Workshop in Provincetown, MA. A veteran of the original Sister Spit tours, he’s performed, lectured, and exhibited art across North America. Cooper is the fiction editor at Gertrude Press, an ELL volunteer tutor for immigrant community members at his local public library. He has received fellowships from the Regional Arts and Culture Council, Lambda Literary Foundation, and RADAR Labs. Cooper Lee has taught writing at the University of Portland, Clark College, Portland State University, and at various Portland-area high schools as a writer-in-residence through Literary Art’s program Writers in The Schools. He is a 2018 Visiting Writer at the Pacific Northwest College of Art’s Critical Studies graduate program.

FB: cooperfrickinleee Twitter: @CooperLeeB IG: cooperleebomb

Hui Zhou

”It may take time, but dreams can come true.” This speaks to Hui Zhou, a bilingual writer, a freelance interpreter and translator with a long career in natural science.

Born, eduated, worked, married, became a mother and a respected senior scientist in her home city Beijing, Hui created her next opportunity to Canada. In the Annapolis Valley of Nova Scotia, she researched in her favorite field-entomology and obtained a Master of Scence Degree, dreamed for a long time, from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax.

Still, Hui explores wider in science, but she never stops writing that had been one of her hobbies for most of her life. Recently she turned writing more into a real career. Thus, one more dream comes true.

Hui writes in two languages, Mandarin Chinese and English. Her articles about St. Margaret’s Bay, winter stories in Nova Scotia, the Bay of Fundy . . . and many more life stories swarm into multi-medium in Canada and in China.

She had dreamed of publishing books. In May 2018, her first book, Running Wild with Bossy Boy, was self-designed, self-published on Amazon and locally printed. It tells the real stories about chicken’s personalities, or chicken-alities especially to children, but also with adults in mind.

Now Hui plans for her Essay Collections and other non-fiction books for children.

Being a member of Association of Translators and Interpreters of Nova Scotia (ATINS), Hui enjoys interpreting and translating for the Justice System and public/community services in/outside of Nova Scotia.

Gardening, a heritage from Grandpa, remains her favorite pastime.

Geraldine Tuck

Geraldine Tuck writer, world traveller and retired elementary teacher, is known for her Mystery Marauder Series for readers 8-14. Setting is along the south shore of Nova Scotia during the 1930’s. The first three books deal with rum running, gold mining and the Oak Island Mystery. All are suitable for grades 3-6. During a school visit, students are dressed as characters and books are discussed. Time to draw a treasure map or give a verbal lesson, ‘Improving Detail’, is also offered.

Her newest book, Halifax Explosion Mystery, was published in time for the 100 anniversary of the explosion. The content is suited to grades 5-7. The hour visit involves: a power point presentation on the history of the explosion, an explanation how artifacts and newspapers are used to plot a story and an interactive lesson showing students how she weave facts with fiction.

Midnight Marauders ,Moonlight Marauders, Mystery Marauders and Halifax Explosion Mystery appear on the Education Book Order List for Nova Scotia teachers. Contact GlenMargaret Publishing. gmp@eastlink.ca for large orders. You can buy directly from the author’s email, intuitionwg@gmail.com

Check out Geraldine’s website: geraldinetuck.com

Sarah Sawler

Sarah Sawler is the award-winning author of three books: 100 Things You Don’t Know About Nova Scotia; 100 Things You Don’t Know About Atlantic Canada – For Kids; and the Moonbeam Spirit Award-winning Be Prepared: The Frankie MacDonald Guide to Life, the Weather, and Everything (with Frankie MacDonald). Both books have been nominated for the 2019/2020 Hackmatack Awards.

When she’s not writing books, she’s working as a publicist for graphic novel publisher Conundrum Press, reviewing children’s literature, writing web content for tech companies, or marketing comic books. She lives in Nova Scotia with her partner, two kids, one cat, one dog, one bearded dragon, and one crested gecko.

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

<!–more–>Sarah Mian is from Dartmouth, NS. Her debut novel When the Saints won the Jim Connors Dartmouth Book Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award and was nominated for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. She lives in Queensland, Nova Scotia.

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.

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 sequel, Dark Beneath the Moon (Tyche Books) followed in 2015, and a third book in the Nearspace series, Beyond the Sentinel Stars, released in 2017. 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. Her most recent short fiction has appeared in Wild Musette Journal, Pulp Science Fiction From the Rock, and Apocalypse: Dark Drabbles #6. She’s currently adding more titles to her urban fantasy Olympia Investigations series and working on a comic fantasy novel as well as a new Nearspace book.

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.

Philip Moscovitch

I am a freelance writer, editor, and audio producer with a passion for tellng stories.

My book Adventures in Bubbles and Brine (Formac, 2019) explores Nova Scotia fermentation traditions (everything from craft beer to sauerkraut) and the people reviving and reinventing them. Mollie Katzen, author of The Moosewood Cookbook and The Heart of the Plate, says it is a “beautifully written book – which is at once a travel memoir, a weave of lore, histories, and personal tales, and an inspiring recipe collection.” Author and fermentation revivalist Sandor Katz (The Art of Fermentation) calls it “a beautiful window into the culture of fermentation in Nova Scotia! Philip Moscovitch introduces us to old timers carrying on traditions, and to leaders of the province’s contemporary fermentation revival.”

I have been publishing non-fiction for more than 25 years. My work has appeared in dozens of publications, including The Walrus, Saltscapes, Reader’s Digest, The Globe and Mail, The Gazette (Montreal), Halifax Magazine, East Coast Living, The Halifax Examiner, DAL Magazine, The Coast, Atlantic Books Today, My Halifax Experience, American Craft, Atlantic Co-operator, Canadian Co-operator, Tablet, Best Health, Shambhala Sun, Concordia Magazine, Maroon and White (SMU), Queen’s Alumni Review, York U Magazine, Equinox (remember Equinox?), Farm Credit Canada Express, OpenFile, Optimyz, Canadian Screenwriter, Playback, The Big Frame, Canadian Bar Association National magazine, Les carrières de l’ingénierie, and Les carrières du droit.

I have contributed essays to the non-fiction books Dogs With Jobs, Saltlines, and Look Ahead, Get Ahead: Growing Career Opportunities for Technicians and Technologists (this one was a lot more fun than it sounds).

For five years, I was the editor of Canadian Screenwriter magazine, and I’ve been a writer and story editor for several documentaries. As an audio producer, my work has aired both regionally and nationally on CBC Radio.

While my focus is mostly non-fiction, I have also published short fiction and poetry, and for 14 years I wrote the beloved Daisy Dreamer comic for Chickadee magazine.

My interests are broad. I’ve written about everything from professional wrestling to mental health, and from food to art. My short feature Small-town Smackdown,written for The Walrus, was a National Magazine Award finalist.

I recently graduated from the University of King’s College MFA in Creative Non-fiction program, and am working on a book about new understandings of serious mental illness, as well as a longer upper-elementary fantasy graphic novel series.

In addition to my work in fiction and non-fiction, I am also available to write for organizations in the corporate, government, and non-profit sectors. My clients have included the National Film Board, the Canadian Labour Congress, and numerous independent film producers.