Christy Ann Conlin is a fiction writer based in Wolfville, Nova Scotia. Her books include her debut novel Heave (Doubleday Canada, 2002), which was a national bestseller, a Globe and Mail top 100 book, and was selected as a finalist for several awards, including the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Most recently, Conlin is the author of a short story collection, Watermark (Astoria, 2019).
The lights went out and the the lights went on, and the 13 winners of the 2019 Atlantic BookAwards were announced Thursday night in a gala ceremony held in St, John’s, NL at the Sheraton Hotel. Hosted by CBC’s Angela Antle in a bilingual ceremony, the awards concluded this year’s festival, which ran from May 30 to June 6 with events in Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia.
Nova Writes, the WFNS’s competition for unpublished manuscripts, is thriving, with 45 per cent more entries than last year. All of our readers and judges remarked on the high quality of entries this year.
We rely on the expertise of our members to provide meaningful feedback to our entrants who are judged blind. Thank you for the care and commitment provided by this year’s 13 readers and four judges. A big thank you also to Annick MacAskill, the WFNS’s programming and membership officer, for organizing the competition. It’s a massive job.
The Atlantic Book Awards Society is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 13 different book prizes that make up the 2019 Atlantic Book Awards. The nominated titles represent a wide range of books from Atlantic Canada—everything from the story of a well-known blind mechanic to the biography of 22 Minutes comedian Mark Critch. The full shortlist is below.
Young adult author Tom Ryan is a previous Lambda Literary Fellow whose books have been nominated for the White Pine Award, the Stellar Award, and the Hackmatack Award. In addition to a number of young adult novels, he published his first children’s picture book, A Giant Man from a Tiny Town: A Story of Angus MacAskill, with Nimbus in the fall of 2018. Ryan divides his time between Cape Breton and Ontario.
Evelyn C. White is a journalist and author whose books include Chain, Chain, Change: For Black Women in Abusive Relationships (Seal Press, 1985) and the biography Alice Walker: A Life (W. W. Norton & Company, 2004).
Originally from Cape Breton and now based in Dartmouth, Amy Spurway is a writer, performer, and editor. She has worked with CBC Radio and published in Today’s Parent, the Toronto Star, and other venues. This spring, her debut novel, Crow, was published by Goose Lane Editions. In what follows, Spurway talks about publishing her first book, what she likes about living and writing in her part of Nova Scotia, her new projects, and more.
Sandra Phinney is a professional freelance writer who has been writing and publishing for twenty years. Her articles have appeared in over 70 print and online magazines, and she is also the author of four books and teaches workshops on narrative, travel, and memoir writing. Phinney lives on the edge of the Tusket River in Yarmouth County. In what follows, she tells us about how she started out as a freelancer, planning your work as a writer, and more.
Poet Margo Wheaton’s debut collection, The Unlit Path Behind the House (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2016), won the Canadian Authors Association’s Fred Kerner Award and was selected as a finalist for the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award, the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, a ReLit Award, and other literary honours. In what follows, Wheaton talks to us about writer’s block, her new writing projects, what she likes about writing in the Maritimes, and more.
Based in Halifax, Alison Delory is a writer, editor, and communications professional. Her writing has appeared in The Globe and Mail, Dalhousie Magazine, Halifax Magazine, and other publications. She is also the author of two children’s books, and her first novel for adults, Making it Home, will appear with Nimbus this June. In what follows, Delory shares the story of how she got started as a writer, details of her new projects, and more.
