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AFTERWORDS
LITERARY FESTIVAL
FESTIVAL AUTHORS
MONA AWAD
Mona Awad is the author of ALL’S WELL, BUNNY, and 13 WAYS OF LOOKING AT A FAT GIRL. BUNNY was a finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award and the New England Book Award. It was named a Best Book of 2019 by Time, Vogue, and the New York Public Library. It is currently being developed for film with Bad Robot Productions. 13 WAYS won the Amazon Best First Novel Award and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Awad’s latest novel ROUGE (out September 12 from Penguin Canada), is being adapted for film by Fremantle and Sinestra. She teaches fiction in the creative writing program at Syracuse University and is based in Boston.
EVENT: SATURDAY NIGHT'S ALRIGHT FOR READING
MONA AWAD
DENIS BOUCHER
Denis Boucher est originaire de Shippagan, dans la Péninsule acadienne du Nouveau-Brunswick. Détenteur d’une maîtrise en psychologie de l’Université de Moncton, il a œuvré pendant quelques années en milieu scolaire, puis dans la création graphique et la publicité. Lecteur incurable depuis sa tendre enfance, il décide en 2002 de se lancer dans la littérature jeunesse. Son premier roman, Le monstre du lac Baker, se mérite le Prix littéraire Hackmatack — Le choix des jeunes. Depuis, neuf autres titres se sont ajoutés à la série des aventures des Trois Mousquetaires. En 2017, Le colosse des neiges de Campbellton est lauréat du Prix Tamarack — Le choix des jeunes de l’Ontario, puis il remporte à nouveau le Prix Hackmatack en 2023 avec Le Chien d’or de Québec. Denis Boucher se laisse inspirer par les lieux, les personnages et les paysages d’une Acadie contemporaine pour livrer des romans actuels et teintés de couleurs locales. Il est aujourd’hui de retour à son alma mater, l’Université de Moncton, cette fois à titre de directeur du recrutement étudiant. Il vit à Dieppe au Nouveau-Brunswick.
EVENT: JOURNEE JEUNESSE
DENIS BOUCHER
EDEN BOUDREAU
Eden Boudreau (she/they) is a lifelong maritimer, raised in Halifax, NS and relocated to Ontario in 2016 with their family. It was at this time she decided, using her own life experiences as a bisexual, polyamorous woman who has survived her fair share of adversity as inspiration, to pursue their lifelong dream of becoming an author. Eden's personal journalism has been published in major publications such as Flare, Today's Parent and Runner's World Magazine. And their debut memoir, CRYING WOLF has been spurring deep and important conversations since it’s publication this spring from Book*hug Press. As the creator and host of Dear Lonely Writer, Eden interviews best selling authors from around the world and discusses the emotional labour that often comes with the writing process - before, during and even after the book deal. In her (minimal) free time, Eden spends it with her three sons, menageries of pets - including a duck named Dave - at their home in Georgina, ON.
EVENT: VIRTUAL WORKSHOP ON MEMOIR
EDEN BOUDREAU
LAURIE BROWN
Laurie Brown has built a reputation as an accomplished interviewer, writer and seasoned broadcaster for TV (CityTV, CBC’s The National and CBC’s Newsworld), radio (CBCMusic’s The Signal) and for the last 7 years, as a podcaster with Pondercast, featuring Laurie’s original essays that straddle philosophy, culture, science and spirituality all with original music by Joshua Van Tassel. Intensely human and intimate, she has built a loyal following for Pondercast through Patreon.
EVENT: FRIDAY NIGHT WRITES
LAURIE BROWN
ALI BRYAN
Ali Bryan is a novelist and creative nonfiction writer who explores the what-ifs, the wtfs and the wait-a-minutes of every day. Her work has been shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, nominated for the Pushcart Prize, longlisted for both the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and the Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing prize, and has been optioned for TV by Sony Pictures. The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships is her fifth novel. Born in Halifax, she now lives in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies on Treaty 7 Territory, where she has a wrestling room in her garage and regularly gets choked out by her family. Follow her on IG: @alikbryan or www.alibryan.com
EVENT: VIRTUAL FICTION WORKSHOP
ALI BRYAN
CHARLENE CARR
Charlene Carr spent much of her childhood creating elaborate, multi-faceted storylines for her dolls and reading under the blankets with a flashlight when she was supposed to be asleep. Continuing with this love, she studied literature at university, attaining a BA and MA in English, and then a degree in Journalism. After travelling the globe and working an array of mostly writing related jobs, she decided the time had come to focus on her true love – novel writing. She has independently published nine novels and her first agented novel, Hold My Girl, sold to HarperCollins Canada, as well as publishers in the US, UK, and Lithuania. It has been optioned for a limited series by Blink49 Studios in partnership with Groundswell Productions. Charlene received grants from Arts Nova Scotia and Canada Council for the Arts to write and revise her next novel. She lives in Nova Scotia with her family.
EVENT: BOOK APPETIT BRUNCH
CHARLENE CARR
BRIANA CORR SCOTT
Briana loves to make botanical illustrations, surface patterns, and paper dolls. She begins every project by painting from life. While she walks by the sea and hikes in the woods near her home in Nova Scotia, lines of poems and stories come to her. She often writes and draws simultaneously in one sketchbook. All of her projects are inspired by a place in this way; she combines the magic that is found in the quiet details of a landscape with her love of folktales to imagine her many creations. Her favourite thing to make is picture books, and she dreams of writing a novel.
EVENT: KIDS' DAY
BRIANA CORR SCOTT
NICOLA DAVISON
Nicola Davison is a professional photographer and the author of two books. Her first novel, In the Wake, won the 2019 Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Dartmouth Book Award. Decoding Dot Grey was nominated for a White Pine Award and won the 2023 Ann Connor Brimer Award for YA Fiction. Born in Nova Scotia, she has lived in too many places and done just enough world traveling to appreciate home. She lives in Dartmouth with her boat-crazy family and delightfully stubborn Basset Hound.
EVENT: WRITING WORKSHOP FOR YOUNG WRITERS AGES 12-17
NICOLA DAVISON
EMMA DONOGHUE
EMMA DONOGHUE is a novelist, screenwriter and playwright. Her novel Room has sold almost three million copies, won the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes. Donoghue scripted the film adaptation, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The Wonder was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Donoghue co-wrote the screen adaptation. The Pull of the Stars was nominated for the Trillium Book Award and Scotiabank Giller Prize. Donoghue's fiction ranges from the contemporary to the historical and includes two books for young readers.
EVENTS: BOOK APPETIT BRUNCH
A NOVEL APPROACH
EMMA DONOGHUE
JEFF DOUGLAS
Jeff Douglas is a born storyteller with a background in theatre and narration. Born in Truro, N.S., Jeff Douglas has travelled the country, tackling projects as disparate as mushing dogs in Yukon to jumping out of planes with search-and-rescue personnel from the 442nd Squadron. He returned to his home province in June 2019 to host Mainland Nova Scotia’s afternoon show, Mainstreet, on CBC Radio One.
EVENT: OCEANS PANEL
JEFF DOUGLAS
FRANCESCA EKWUYASI
francesca ekwuyasi is a learner, artist, and storyteller born in Lagos, Nigeria. She was awarded the Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers in 2022 for her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020). Butter Honey Pig Bread was also shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction, and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Dublin Literary Award. CBC's Canada Reads: Canada's Annual Battle of the Books selected Butter Honey Pig Bread as one of five contenders in 2021 where it came in 2nd place. Forthcoming October 24th is Curious Sounds: a Dialogue in Three Movements (Arsenal Pulp 2023) an art book collaboration with Roger Mooking.
EVENT: SATURDAY NIGHT'S ALRIGHT FOR READING
FRANCESCA EKWUYASI
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ALICIA ELLIOTT
Alicia Elliott is a Mohawk writer and editor living in Brantford, Ontario. She has written for The Globe and Mail, CBC, Hazlitt, and many others. She’s had numerous essays nominated for National Magazine Awards, winning gold in 2017 and an honorable mention in 2020. Her short fiction was selected for The Best American Short Stories 2018, Best Canadian Stories 2018, and The Journey Prize Stories 30. Alicia was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award. Her first book, A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, was a national bestseller in Canada. It was also nominated for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award. And Then She Fell is her debut novel.
EVENTS: FRIDAY NIGHT WRITES
FICTION WORKSHOP
ALICIA ELLIOTT
SHARON ENGLISH
Sharon English is the author of the novel Night in the World (Freehand Books, 2022) and two short story collections, Uncomfortably Numb and Zero Gravity. Zero Gravity was long listed for the Giller Prize, short-listed for a ReLit Award, and included in the Globe and Mail’s Best 100 new titles of the year. In 2020 she co-edited “Writing in the Age of Unravelling,” a special issue of CNQ magazine devoted to ecologically themed literature. Described as a “a splendid and searing novel, pressed up against the tremours of our times,” Night in the World has been selected for the 2023 Ultimate Cli-Fi Book Club for Sustainability in Higher Education, included in the 49th Shelf’s Top 22 of 2022, and features on the Literature of Restoration website initiative. Originally from London, ON, Sharon lived for decades in Toronto and now resides in rural Nova Scotia.
EVENT: SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE CARLETON
SHARON ENGLISH
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LISA FISHMAN
Lisa Fishman’s fiction debut is World Naked Bike Ride, a collection of 40 hybrid prose stories published by Gaspereau Press (December, 2022). Her previous seven books of poetry include Mad World, Mad Kings, Mad Composition; 24 Pages and other poems and The Happiness Experiment, all on Wave Books and Ahsahta Press; an earlier collection, Dear, Read, was selected by Brenda Hillman for Ahsahta. Her work is included in Best American Experimental Writing, The Ecopoetry Anthology and elsewhere, and has been nominated for a PEN/Robert Dau Short Story Prize and a Pushcart. She has recent work forthcoming in Granta and a new book of poetry forthcoming on Wave (One Big Time). With family roots in Montreal, she now divides her time between Wisconsin and Eastern Canada.
EVENT: FESTIVAL KICK-OFF PARTY
LISA FISHMAN
EMMA FITZGERALD
Emma FitzGerald is known for her whimisical drawings and written stories of people and places. She lives, draws and writes in Lunenburg, NS / E’se’katik on the Atlantic Ocean.
EVENT: KIDS' DAY/JOURNEE JEUNESSE
Emma FitzGerald
CAMILLE FOUILLARD
CAMILLE FOUILLARD
Camille Fouillard grew up in St. Lazare, Manitoba on Treat 2 territory. She has worked with the Innu for 40 years on storytelling and books, activism, land rights, social health and education. She edited a number of Innu books, including Gathering Voices: Mamunitau Staianimuanu: The Davis Inlet People’s Inquiry (Douglas & McIntyre) and co-edited It’s Like the Legend: Innu Women’s Voices (Gynergy). She is the winner of the Larry Jackson Writer’s Award. She presently works with Mamu Tshishkutamashutau Innu Education supporting Innu curriculum development. She is mom to Esmée and Léo and spends her time between St. John’s Newfoundland and Nitassinan. Precious Little is her first novel.
EVENT: FESTIVAL KICK-OFF PARTY
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SHAUNTAY GRANT
Shauntay Grant is a poet, playwright, children’s author and interdisciplinary artist. She is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Dalhousie University, and a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists. A former poet laureate for the City of Halifax, she “creates artworks that are engaging and accessible, but also challenging, rigorous, and informed by deep research (The Royal Society of Canada).” She is the author of Africville (Groundwood, 2018) which won a Marilyn Baillie Picture Book Award and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards, and My Fade Is Fresh (Penguin, 2022) which received starred reviews from Kirkus, School Library Journal, Publishers Weekly, and Booklist. Her most recent children’s picture book titles include Snowy Mittens and Sandy Toes—part of the Let’s Play Outside series published by Abrams Appleseed.
EVENT: CHILDREN'S WRITING AND PUBLISHING WORKSHOP
SHAUNTAY GRANT
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TARAS GRESCOE
Taras Grescoe is the author of seven books, among them Bottomfeeder, The Devil’s Picnic, Straphanger, and Shanghai Grand. He is a contributor to The New York Times, The Guardian, National Geographic, and The Smithsonian. His next book, The Lost Supper: Searching for the Future of Food in the Flavors of the Past is published by Greystone. He lives in Montreal with his wife Erin and his two sons, Desmond and Victor.
EVENT: THE LOST SUPPER
TARAS GRESCOE
SYLVIA D. HAMILTON
Sylvia D. Hamilton is an award-winning writer, filmmaker and artist, whose poetry collection And I Alone Escaped to Tell You (2014) was a finalist for the Nova Scotia Masterworks Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her honours include the Portia White Prize, the 2019 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media and the 2021 Luminary Award given by the Documentary Organization of Canada. Her films include Portia White: Think on Me, The Little Black School House and Black Mother Black Daughter among others. Tender, her newest poetry collection, won the 2023 Maxine Tynes Poetry Award and was a finalist for the League of Canadian Poets Pat Lowther Memorial Award. She is an Inglis Professor Emeritus at the University of King’s College in Halifax.
EVENTS: POETRY AND PROSE
POETRY WORKSHOP
SYLVIA D. HAMILTON
SARAH HAMPSON
Sarah Hampson is an award-winning journalist and the author of a memoir and a children's picture book. She lives on Nova Scotia’s south shore.
EVENT: A NOVEL APPROACH
SARAH HAMPSON
NICHOLAS HERRING
Nicholas Herring's debut novel, Some Hellish, was the winner of the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. He lives in Murray Harbour, PEI, where he works as a carpenter and fisherman.
EVENTS: FESTIVAL KICK-OFF PARTY
POETRY AND PROSE
NICHOLAS HERRING
AMY JONES
Amy Jones is the bestselling author of Every Little Piece of Me (M&S, 2019) and the Stephen Leacock Medal-nominated We’re All in This Together (M&S, 2016), which was adapted into a feature film in 2021. Her debut short fiction collection, What Boys Like (Bibiloasis, 2009), won the Metcalf-Rooke Award and was shortlisted for the ReLit Award. Her third novel, Pebble and Dove, which tells the story of three generations of women brought together by their shared love of a captive manatee, was published on May 30, 2023 with M&S. Amy is the program director of the Flying Books School of Reading and Writing, and a frequent mentor in their mentorship program. Originally from Halifax, she currently lives in Hamilton, ON with her husband, writer Andrew F. Sullivan, and her rescue dog, Iggy.
EVENTS: FESTIVAL KICK-OFF PARTY
FRIDAY NIGHT WRITES
AMY JONES
MONIQUE LEBLANC
Director, actress, screenwriter, writer and producer Monique LeBlanc is a prominent figure in Eastern Canada’s film industry, working in both documentary and fiction. Through a powerful dialogue between image and word, her films explore the worlds of painters, musicians and writers, as well as ordinary people confronted with poverty, racism or exile. From shantytowns to concentration camps, from border crossings to vast wilderness, Monique LeBlanc’s works weave different stories together, delving into the intricate complexities of human relationships and offering a vivid portrayal of contemporary societies. Her credits include collaborations with the National Film Board, CBC, Bravo, the History Channel and the Movie Network. Notably, her adaptation of Louise Dupré’s acclaimed book of poetry, Higher Than Flames Will Go (2020), stands as a cinematic tour de force. Geographies of DAR is her fourth feature documentary and fifth collaboration with the NFB.
EVENT: THE GEOGRAPHIES OF DAR
MONIQUE LEBLANC
NANCI LEE
Nanci Lee (she/her) is a Chinese-Syrian poet and facilitator. Hsin, Nanci's first trade-length book (Brick Books, April 2022) won the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award. Hsin explores body, memory, desire and Su Hui, a 4th century Chinese poet who created a complex, brocade palindrome. Chapbooks Preparation (Free Fall, 2016) (short-listed for the bpNichol Chapbook Award) and Hsin (Thee Hellbox Press, 2016) are contained in this book. A racialized settler, Nanci is based in Mi’kmaki (Nova Scotia), unceded, unsurrendered Mi’kmaw territory. When not writing or playing outdoors, Nanci works for Tatamagouche Centre, a spiritual and justice-oriented learning and retreat centre.
EVENT: POETRY AND PROSE
NANCI LEE
STEPHENS GERARD MALONE
Stephens Gerard Malone has been lured by his protagonists for years, from rural Musquodoboit Harbour to the storied shores of the Bedford Basin, the Sachsenhausen concentration camp out- side Berlin to the legendary London Zoo. A settler grateful to be writing in unceded Mi’kma’ki, the author of Big Town and The History of Rain—Jumbo is his sixth novel.
EVENT: FESTIVAL KICK-OFF PARTY
STEPHENS GERARD MALONE
LEO MCKAY JR
Leo McKay Jr.'s most recent book is the novel What Comes Echoing Back, from Vagrant Press. His three previous books received awards and accolades including being a Giller Prize finalist, the Dartmouth Book Award, and the first ever selection for the One Book Nova Scotia event. He lives in Mi'kma'ki, the unceded ancestral home of the Mi'kmaw people, where he has been a high school English teacher for almost 30 years.
EVENT: SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE CARLETON
LEO MCKAYÂ JR
DANIELLE METCALFE-CHENAIL
Danielle Metcalfe-Chenail is a history geek and author of a handful of nonfiction books for kids and grownups, including the Canadian bestsellers Alis the Aviator and In This Together: Fifteen Stories of Truth and Reconciliation. Her latest picture book, Freddie the Flyer, is co-authored with friend and pioneering Gwich’in pilot, Fred Carmichael, featuring illustrations by Inuvialuit artist Audrea Loreen-Wulf. Danielle is former Historian Laureate for Edmonton, Writer-in-Residence at Berton House in the Yukon, and was a finalist for a Houston Reader’s Choice Award. After moving all over North America, she now lives outside Halifax with her young family, reading everything she can get her hands on.
EVENT: KIDS' DAY
DANIELLE METCALFE-CHENAIL
THERESA MEUSE
Theresa Meuse was raised in L’sitkuk Mi’kmaq community and left in 1986 to attend Dalhousie University as a mature student. Since graduating with a Bachelor Degree, she has been employed with several Mi’kmaq organizations including, the Confederacy of Mainland Mi’kmaq, The Atlantic Policy Congress and the Mi’kmaw Native Friendship Center. Along with being privileged to serve a two-year term as Chief in her community, Theresa also spent many years working as an Indigenous Educator and Advisor. She is presently operates an online craft business and is the author of four published children’s books entitled, The Sharing Circle, L’nu’k, The Gathering and Sweet Grass. Theresa is a wife, mother of three and grandmother of four.
EVENT: KIDS' DAY
THERESA MEUSE
SEAN MICHAELS
is the author of three book, most recently the novel Do You Remember Being Born?, and founder of the pioneering music blog Said the Gramophone. His non-fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Walrus, and Pitchfork. Sean is a recipient of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize, the Grand Prix Numix, the Prix Nouvelles Écritures, and he has been nominated for the Dublin Literary Award, the Kirkus Prize, the Peabody Awards, and the Prix des libraires du Quebec. Born in Stirling, Scotland, Sean lives in Montreal.
EVENTS: FRIDAY NIGHT WRITES
SATURDAY AFTERNOON AT THE CARLETON
SEAN MICHAELS
SARAH MIAN
Sarah Mian's debut novel, When the Saints, won the Jim Connors Book Award, the Margaret & John Savage First Book Award, and was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour. She is working on her second novel, The World in Awful Sleep.
EVENT: KICK-OFF PARTY
SARAH MIAN
TIFFANY MORRIS
Tiffany Morris is a Mi’kmaw writer of speculative fiction and poetry from Kjipuktuk (Halifax), Nova Scotia. She is the author of the ecohorror novella Green Fuse Burning (Stelliform Press, 2023) and the horror poetry collection Elegies of Rotting Stars (Nictitating Books, 2022). Her work has appeared in Uncanny Magazine, Nightmare Magazine, and Apex Magazine, among others. She has an MA in English with a focus on Indigenous Futurisms. Her work has been nominated for Elgin, Rhysling, and Aurora Awards.
EVENT: FRIDAY AFTERNOON AT MORLEY'S
TIFFANY MORRIS
AMANDA PETERS
Amanda Peters is a writer of Mi’kmaw and settler ancestry. Her work has appeared in the Antigonish Review, Grain Magazine, The Alaska Quarterly Review, the Dalhousie Review, and filling station magazine. She is the winner of the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award (IVA) for unpublished prose and a participant in the 2021 Writers Trust Rising Stars program. Amanda has a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto and she is a graduate of the Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe New Mexico. Amanda teaches in the Department of English and Theatre at Acadia University. She lives and writes in the Annapolis Valley Nova Scotia with her fur babies Holly and Pook. Her debut novel, The Berry Pickers, was released on April 4, 2023 from HarperCollins Canada.
EVENTS: FESTIVAL KICK-OFF PARTY
SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN MILLBROOK
A NOVEL APPROACH
AMANDA PETERS
MERCEDES PETERS
Mercedes Peters (she/her) is a Mi’kmaw PhD Candidate in History at the University of British Columbia. Mercedes is a band member of Glooscap First Nation. While her research focuses on Mi'kmaw and Wolastoqey women's grassroots activism, she has a passion for all things horror.
EVENTS: FRIDAY NIGHT WRITES
SATURDAY NIGHT'S ALRIGHT FOR READING
MERCEDES PETERS
KAREN PINCHIN
Karen Pinchin is an award-winning investigative journalist and culinary school graduate. A recent Tow Fellow at PBS's Frontline, she graduated from Columbia Journalism School with a Master of Arts in science journalism and has since been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the Sloan Foundation. Her work has appeared in Scientific American, Canadian Geographic, Hakai Magazine, The Globe and Mail, and The Walrus, among other outlets. She lives, writes, and fishes in Halifax, Nova Scotia, with her husband, son, and a tankful of guppies.
EVENTS: OCEANS PANEL
NONFICTION WORKSHOP
KAREN PINCHIN
WILLIAM PING
William Ping is a novelist and journalist, born and raised in St. John’s. His debut novel Hollow Bamboo was published by HarperCollins in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award. He has previously been published in ‘Us, Now,’ Hard Ticket and Riddle Fence. William is also know for his contributions to CBC.ca and CBC Radio in Newfoundland, where he can most often be heard reading the news. William is a Fellow of MUN’s School of Graduate Studies (BA Hons. ‘18, MA ‘20) and has been the recipient of MUN’s Thesis Excellence Award, the Cox and Palmer Creative Writing Award, and the Landfall Trust Award.
EVENTS: POETRY AND PROSE
FRIDAY AFTERNOON AT MORLEY'S
WILLIAM PING
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NICO
Nicole Poirier is originally from Chéticamp, Nova Scotia. Her love for children brought her at l’Université de Moncton, where she graduated in 1992 with a Bachelor of Education, Preschool-Elementary. Since then, she had the pleasure of always working with children either as a kindergarten teacher, resource, literacy teacher or with Famille et Petite enfance. She has four published French children's books with Bouton d’or Acadie.
EVENT: JOURNEE JEUNESSE
NICO
MICHELLE PORTER
Michelle Porter is a writer originally from the Métis prairie homeland. She is the descendent of a long line of Métis storytellers (the Goulet family). Her first novel A Grandmother Begins the Story was published in May 2023. She is the author of two books of nonfiction, Approaching Fire and Scratching River, and one book of poetry, Inquiries. She lives in Newfoundland and Labrador and teaches creative writing at Memorial University.
EVENT: A NOVEL APPROACH
MICHELLE PORTER
DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS
David Adams Richards is an award-winning novelist, screenwriter, essayist, poet, senator and member of the Order of Canada. In 1988, Richard's novel Nights Below Station Street won the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language fiction. He was also nominated for Road to the Stilt House in 1985, For Those Who Hunt the Wounded Down in 1993 and Mercy Among the Children in 2000. Mercy Among the Children won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was shortlisted for the Trillium Award. He received the Governor General's Literary Award for English-language nonfiction for his book Lines on the Water in 1998.His 2006 novel The Friends of Meagre Fortune received the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best Book and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In 2017, The Lost Highway was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. His latest book is Notes on a Writer's Life.
EVENT: THE GEOGRAPHIES OF DAR
DAVID ADAMS RICHARDS
SAL SAWLER
Sal Sawler is the award-winning author of four books including When the Ocean Came to Town. They worked with YouTube star Frankie MacDonald to write Be Prepared: The Frankie MacDonald Guide to Life, the Weather, and Everything, which won a Moonbeam Children's Award, and was shortlisted for Yellow Cedar and Hackmatack Awards. Their second book, 100 Things You Don't Know About Atlantic Canada (For Kids), was also shortlisted for a Hackmatack Award. If they aren't busy writing, they're probably marketing or editing a graphic novel for Conundrum Press, facilitating a workshop, or daydreaming about ocean waterslides. They live and work in Kjipuktuk/Halifax.
EVENT: KIDS' DAY
SAL SAWLER
RAYMOND SEWELL
Raymond Sewell is an Assistant Professor of Indigenous Literature and Culture for the Department of English Language and Literature at Saint Mary's University, a position that allows him to celebrate many aspects of his identity – his history, music, culture, and his role as an educator and supporter of Indigenous issues in K’jipuktuk.
EVENT: SATURDAY NIGHT'S ALRIGHT FOR READING
RAYMOND SEWELL
SYDNEY SMITH
Sydney Smith is the award-winning author and illustrator of Small in the City as well as the illustrator of I Talk Like a River by Jordan Scott, Town Is by the Sea by Joanne Schwartz, Sidewalk Flowers by JonArno Lawson, The White Cat and theMonk by Jo Ellen Bogart, among others. Sydney has received multiple awards including four consecutive New York Times Best Illustrated Children’s Books Awards, two Kate Greenaway Awards and has been nominated for the Hans Christian Andersen Award twice. Sydney currently lives by the sea in Nova Scotia, Canada with his wife and children.
EVENT: KIDS' DAY
SYDNEY SMITH
LAUREN SOLOY
Lauren Soloy is the author and illustrator of When Emily was Small (Tundra Books, 2020) and Etty Darwin and the Four Pebble Problem (Tundra Books, 2021) and The Hidden World of Gnomes (Tundra Books, 2023) and the illustrator of I’s the B’y (Greystone Kids, 2022) and A Tulip in Winter, a Story About Folk Artist Maud Lewis (Greystone Kids, 2023). She has lived on both coasts of Canada, always within reach of the sea. She currently lives in a house that is exactly 100 years older than she is in rural Nova Scotia, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People. She shares her home with her librarian husband, two curious children, an ever-expanding collection of books, two hives of bees, and one cat.
EVENT: KIDS' DAY
LAUREN SOLOY
WANDA TAYLOR
Wanda Taylor is an award-winning author, filmmaker, journalist, and professor. She writes across children’s, YA, and adult markets. Her recently released middle grade novel, The Grover School Pledge is the first title in a two-book deal with HarperCollins. The second is set for release Spring 2024. Wanda’s nonfiction middle grade book, Brothers In The Sky (Nimbus) is also set for release next year. It focuses on the remarkable accomplishments of two former Black pilots, Allan Bundy, and George Borden. Wanda has written and produced content across film, television, and documentary spaces. Her magazine features, poems, and essays appear in publications across Canada, the US, and the UK. She is a former Acquisitions Editor, and currently works as an editor and sensitivity reader. Wanda teaches college courses in story writing, communications, and screenwriting. She also teaches a journalism course at Kings College and serves as a Faculty/Mentor in the Kings MFA Writing and Publishing program.
EVENT: KIDS' DAY
WANDA TAYLOR
SIMON THIBAULT
Simon Thibault is a journalist, food writer, and editor. HIs first book, "Pantry and Palate: Remembering and Rediscovering Acadian Food," was shortlisted for a Taste Canada Award. He always has room for whole grain baked goods, black coffee, and any info you have about that weird apple tree in your backyard.
EVENT: THE LOST SUPPER
SIMON THIBAULT
LAURA TRETHEWEY
Laura Trethewey is an award-winning ocean and environmental journalist and author of The Imperiled Ocean: Human Stories of a Changing Sea. Her writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Smithsonian Magazine, Courrier international, The Guardian, The Walrus, Toronto’s Globe and Mail, Hakai Magazine, and Canadian Geographic. She received a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia and won Canada’s Writers’ Trust Rising Star Award in 2020.
EVENT: OCEANS PANEL
LAURA TRETHEWEY
SUSAN VANDE GRIEK
Susan Vande Griek started writing for children when she had four of her own. She especially likes writing poems and has used them in all of her picture books. Two of these, The Art Room and Go Home Bay, are about Canadian artists. Most of the others are about birds, including the award-winning Loon, Hawks Kettle Puffins Wheel, and Two Crows. Susan studied English Literature and Education and has worked in several schools and libraries over the years since then. For a long time she lived in St. Andrews, NB, but now makes Halifax home.
EVENT: KIDS' DAY
SUSAN VANDE GRIEKE
BART VAUTOUR
Bart Vautour is a writer, editor, and teacher who lives in Kjipuktuk/Halifax and works at Dalhousie University. He edits the “Throwback Series” of books with Invisible Publishing and is the author of The Truth about Facts (Invisible) and I’ll Learn to Listen / At the Trailing Edge of the World (Gap Riot).
EVENT: POETRY AND PROSE
BART VAUTOUR
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ZOE WHITTALL
Zoe Whittall's fourth novel The Spectacular was published in 2021. The New York Times called it “a competent and highly readable testament to the strength of the maternal bond” and The Toronto Star called it “a singularly impressive piece of fiction.” Her third novel, The Best Kind of People, was published in 2017 by Penguin Random House U.S. and was shortlisted for The Scotiabank Giller Prize, named Indigo's #1 Book of 2016, and a best book of the year by Walrus Magazine, The Globe & Mail, Toronto Life, & The National Post. Her second novel Holding Still for as Long as Possible won a Lambda literary award for trans fiction in 2011 and was a Stonewall Honor Book. Her debut novel Bottle Rocket Hearts won the Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Dayne Ogilvie Award for Best Emerging LGBTQA+ novel. She has worked as a TV writer on the Emmy-Award winning comedy show Schitt’s Creek and Degrassi, and won a Canadian Screen Award for comedy writing on The Baroness Von Sketch Show. She has published three volumes of poetry, most recently an anniversary edition of The Emily Valentine Poems. Her latest novel is The Fake.
EVENT: SATURDAY NIGHT'S ALRIGHT FOR READING
ZOE WHITTALL
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JACK WONG
Jack Wong was born in Hong Kong and raised in Vancouver. In 2010, he left behind a life as a bridge engineer to pursue his Bachelor of Fine Arts at NSCAD University; he has called Kjipuktuk/Halifax home ever since. Working as a children’s author/illustrator, Jack seeks to share his winding journey with young readers so that they may embrace the unique amalgams of experiences that make up their own lives. His debut picture book, When You Can Swim (Scholastic) received the 2023 Boston Globe–Horn Book Award; his second picture book, The Words We Share (Annick Press) is out September 19th. His other forthcoming books include All That Grows (Groundwood, 2024), and an untitled picture book biography on acclaimed cellist Yo-Yo Ma, in collaboration with author James Howe (Abrams Books for Young Readers, 2025).
EVENT: KIDS' DAY
JACK WONG
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