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A Place to Build: spoken word workshop (Halifax) with Andre Fenton

Award-winning author and spoken word artist Andre Fenton invites participants to explore their unique stories through creativity, reflection, and self-discovery. Participants will use poetry and spoken word as tools for mapping, shaping, and expressing these stories, with a focus on performance, wordplay, structure, and creative risks.

  • Session 1, Finding Your Poem, focuses on reflection—uncovering meaningful, impactful experiences, discovering themes, and understanding the story you plan to tell.
  • Session 2, Crafting the Story, focuses on writing—transforming ideas into poetry and spoken word, taking creative risks with language, imagery, wordplay, and poetic devices.
  • Session 3, Shaping the Structure, focuses on revision—editing to strengthen each piece through structure, pacing, and clarity.
  • Session 4, Sharing Your Truth, focuses on performance—exploring voice, rhythm, delivery, and stage presence, giving participants the opportunity to bring their words to life and share their stories with others.

Each session begins with creative warm-ups that will encourage participants to reflect, share, and connect with their imagination and lived experiences.

About the instructor: Andre Fenton is an award-winning African Nova Scotian writer, performer, and arts educator who has represented Halifax at eight national spoken word festivals across Canada. He is the 2023 recipient of the Portia White Protege Award and a 2022 recipient of an Emerging Artist Recognition Award from Creative NS Awards. Andre is the author of three young adult fiction novels: Worthy of Love; ANNAKA, which was the 2022 recipient of The Community & Place Award from Digitally Lit; and The Summer Between Us, which won Gold in The Coast’s 2022 Best Of Awards. Andre has facilitated writing and performance workshops in over 100 classrooms across Nova Scotia. He is the founder of The Ink Collective and the director of The Narrative Program at The Bus Stop Theatre Co-Op. He is represented by CookeMcDermid and Meridian Artists. Andre is based in Halifax, Nova Scotia.

Recommended experience levels: New and emerging spoken word artists, including writers more experienced in other forms

Participant cap: 12

Location: Community Room, Bus Stop Theatre Co-op (2203 Gottingen St, Halifax)
The Community Room is accessible only from Maitland Street, which runs parallel to Gottingen.
This venue is wheelchair-accessible and includes wheelchair-accessible washrooms.

Dates of 4-week workshop: Thursdays, Oct 8 + Oct 15 + Oct 22 + Oct 29, 2026 (7:00pm to 9:00pm Atlantic)

Registration for members and non-members: $185.00

Registration for full-time students, the underwaged, and those on fixed incomes: $92.50

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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, writing for 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.

Occasionally, WFNS uses the phrase “emerging and established writers/authors” to mean ‘writers and authors of all experience levels.’

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 info, strategies, and skills that suit their experience. 

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 uncertain about your experience level with respect to any particular workshop, please feel free to contact us at communications@writers.ns.ca