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Memoir: A Journey of Healing and Discovery (Halifax) with Marjorie Simmins

Join author and journalist Marjorie Simmins for a discussion of memoir as a journey of healing and discovery. Can writing help you to understand the incomprehensible? Can creating a memoir help you to heal from life’s storms and blows? Where is the intersection of personal and universal and why is that important to anyone who wants to write a meaningful personal narrative? Should memoirs about grief and loss be done long after the fact, or during the early days? Bring a pen and notebook, and we’ll share our ideas about memoir being an opportunity for personal growth and renewal.

About the instructor: Marjorie Simmins is an award-winning journalist, author, and teacher. Her concentration is creative non-fiction, which adds spice and energy to her memoirs, biographies, and narrative journalism. The author of five books, Simmins’s latest title, In Search of Puffins: Stories of Loss, Light, and Flight, published in May 2025, honours her late husband, writer and filmmaker Silver Donald Cameron, and all who recreate themselves after loss. An unflinching look at the demands of grief, Puffins also celebrates friendship, laughter, and creativity, and how all these help to heal tender hearts.

Participant cap: 25

Location: BMO Community Room of Halifax Central Library (5440 Spring Garden Rd, Halifax)
     [This library is a wheelchair-accessible venue with all-gender washrooms.]

Date of workshop: Saturday, Oct 11 (1:15pm to 2:00pm)

Participation is free

  • Pre-registration (up to 15 per workshop) is open now open to WFNS members and non-members alike.
  • Walk-in participants (at least 10 per workshop) will be welcomed on a first-come-first-served basis. Stop by the BMO Community Room (2nd floor, Halifax Central Library) to see if space is available.

Pre-registration for this workshop is closed, but more than 10 walk-in seats remain!

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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