WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px
WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px

Gather ’Round: A Winter Storytelling Event & Fundraiser (Halifax)

Gather ’Round for an intimate evening of wintery entertainment!

Opening the event will be special guests from WFNS’s Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program: Alexander MacLeod will provide opening remarks, and Lorri Neilsen Glenn, Carol Bruneau, and Michelle Samson will offer short readings.

Celebrated actor, director, and novelist Shelley Thompson will then perform stories from her new story collection, Winter Sky (Vagrant Press, 2025), accompanied by an original score from the Blue Engine String Quartet.

Writer, director, and activist Shelley Thompson is based in Wolfville, Mi’kma’ki. Thompson’s first directorial feature (Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor, 2021) screened internationally and won the 2022 Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award. A multiple ACTRA award-winner, Thompson continues to work on stage and screen while building her writing, directing, and producing credits. Her first documentary series, Translations, aired in 2025. She is the creator of THE DAWN FUND, which supports trans futures in Atlantic Canada. Winter Sky is Thompson’s second book. Her debut novel, Roar, was nominated for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award and the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award.

The Blue Engine String Quartet was formed in 1997 as the core ensemble of the Nova Scotia chamber music series, Blue Engine Music. The Quartet are all members of Symphony Nova Scotia. Blue Engine holds true to classical roots, performing many of the masterworks of the string quartet repertoire, is frequently broadcast on CBC Radio, and was featured, along with four distinguished guest singers in “Quartet Plus Four at Christmas”, a New Scotland Productions Christmas Special for Vision TV and CBC. The Quartet are frequently featured as guest artists on recordings by the likes of Jill Barber, Meaghan Smith, Mary Jane Lamond, Heavy Blinkers, Chucky Danger, and Jenn Grant.

Location: The Carleton (1685 Argyle St, Halifax), a wheelchair-accessible venue with non-gendered washrooms

Date: Tuesday, Nov 18 (7:00pm – 9:00pm)

Tickets: $25 + HST, with proceeds supporting the Alistair MacLeod Mentorship Program

Purchase tickets via The Carleton
Scroll to Top
WFNS logo ltrmark sticky 100px

Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) uses the following terms to describe writers’ experience levels:

  • New writers: those with less than two years’ creative writing experience and/or no short-form publications (e.g., short stories, personal essays, or poems in literary magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks).
  • Emerging writers: those with more than two years’ creative writing experience and/or numerous short-form publications.
  • Early-career authors: those with 1 or 2 book-length publications or the equivalent in book-length and short-form publications.
  • Established authors: those with 3 or 4 book-length publications.
  • Professional authors: those with 5 or more book-length publications.

Please keep in mind that each form of creative writing (fiction, nonfiction, poetry, writing for children and young adults, and others) provides you with a unique set of experiences and skills, so you might consider yourself an ‘established author’ in one form but a ‘new writer’ in another.

The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the above definitions. A workshop’s participants should usually have similar levels of creative writing and / or publication experience. This ensures that each participant gets value from the workshop⁠ and is presented with information, strategies, and skills that suit their career stage. 

For “intensive” and “masterclass” workshops, which provide more opportunities for peer-to-peer feedback, the recommended experience level should be followed closely.

For all other workshops, the recommended experience level is just that—a recommendation—and we encourage potential participants to follow their own judgment when registering.

If you’re uncertain of your experience level with regard to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca