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Get It Right: Finding Your Voice in Writing for Children & Youth (virtual) with Sylvia Gunnery

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You have an idea that keeps tugging at your imagination, or you’ve started moving words along the page to shape a story, or perhaps you’ve written for younger audiences and want to continue to sharpen your skills. Great!

This workshop series will take you to your next step—and further. Through specifically focused activities and group discussion, we will explore theme, place, audience, character, structure, description, and dialogue with special attention to how everything connects to an individual writer’s voice. In each session, you will reflect on and develop your own writing and offer feedback on the draft writing of others. We’ll chat about some of our favourite books for children and youth: What makes them work so well? Why do they matter? We will also take a look at current publishing possibilities, including writing a compelling query letter.

About the instructor: Sylvia Gunnery has published many books for teens and children as well as professional resources for teachers of writing. A recipient of a Prime Minister’s Teaching Award, she enjoys working with adult writers and youth through workshops, mentorships, and Writers In the Schools (WITS) visits. Sylvia lives at Crescent Beach on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, where she’s completing a YA series of linked stories, what I know about next. A story from this collection has been selected for the Red Deer Press anthology I’m Here (2025).

Recommended experience level: New, emerging, and early-career writers of children’s and YA fiction (About recommended experience levels)

Participant cap: 12

Location: Zoom

Dates of 4-week workshop: Tuesdays, Jan 28 + Feb 4 + Feb 11 + Feb 18, 2025 (7:00pm to 9:00pm Atlantic)

Registration for 2025 General Members: $169

Registration for non-members: $234 (includes 2025 General Membership in WFNS)

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1113 Marginal Road

Halifax, NS B3H 4P7

902 423 8116

contact@writers.ns.ca

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The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia is based in Kjipuktuk, in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. This territory is covered by the “Treaties of Peace and Friendship,” which Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) Peoples first signed with the British Crown in 1725. The treaties do not deal with surrender of lands and resources but in fact recognize Mi’kmaq and Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) title and establish the rules for an ongoing relationship between nations.

© Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, 2025. All rights reserved.

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Recommended Experience Levels

The Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia (WFNS) recommends that participants in any given workshop 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. The “Recommended experience level” section of each workshop description refers to the following definitions used by WFNS.

  • 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, and writing for children and young adults) 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.

For “intensive” and “masterclass” creative writing 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