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Women with Agency: a fiction workshop (Halifax) with Cheryl Lawson

This workshop is designed to help fiction writers build their awareness of character agency. We’ll consider agency in lived experience and in the contexts of fiction and psychology, gaining useful insights on developing agency partnership between men and women characters and approaching vulnerability, permission, and violence. Discussion will draw on popular fiction examples (such as The Hating Game, It Ends With Us, and The Twilight Saga) to illustrate the presence or lack of agency. If time allows, participants will create their own micro-fiction snippets that demonstrate their understanding of agency.

While focusing on women characters, the workshop will address elements of agency that also apply to non-binary, trans, and other gender-marginalized characters.

About the instructor: Cheryl Lawson is an author and artist living in Nova Scotia. Cheryl came from South Africa almost twenty years ago, first living in British Columbia before settling in Nova Scotia recently. For over ten years, Cheryl has actively pursued her passion for writing. Her self-published work includes science fiction and poetry-photography books.

Recommended experience level: All writers welcome (About recommended experience levels)

Participant cap: 30

Location: Room 301 (3rd floor), Halifax Public Library (5440 Spring Garden Rd, Halifax)
     Wheelchair-accessible venue with all-gender and gendered washrooms

Date & time: Saturday, Oct 3, 2026 (12:00pm to 12:45pm Atlantic)

Participation is free

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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