BRIAN BARTLETT is the author of seven collections and seven chapbooks of poetry, including The Watchmaker’s Table (honoured with the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry) and Wanting the Day: Selected Poems (The Atlantic Poetry Prize). He has also published two books of prose nature writing, and the compilation of prose pieces All Manner of Tackle: Living with Poetry. Bartlett has edited several volumes of other poets’ selected works, as well as Collected Poems of Alden Nowlan. After nearly three decades of teaching at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax, he retired two years ago, but he remains active writing both poetry and prose.
MARGARET BOUDREAU is a self- taught photographer, who learned from the deep desire to set out on a journey to experience the healing and peace that nature has to offer. She quickly realized that the gift was free to her and should be shared, so found double the joy in finding ways to share this with her children, grandchildren, her beautiful community and abroad.
DAN BRAY is a multidisciplinary artist living in Kji’puktuk/Halifax. His prints are inspired by both the natural and the supernatural worlds; he also creates unique tarot decks and artwork that seek to bridge the two. In addition to his graphic design, Dan is a miniaturist and 3D artist, as well as a theatre maker (www.villainstheatre.com for more info). His visual art can be found at Inkwell Boutique and Argyle Fine Art, as well as online (www.brayowulf.ca) and via his instagram accounts (@braywoulf & @o_vexation).
LINDA E. CLARKE, author, storyteller, is part of a family of storytellers where words and the way they are stitched together are almost as mighty as a good meal or a visit. Stories – good ones and hard ones and everything in between – are in her blood. She’s written many of them, published some of them in places like The New Quarterly, The Canadian Medical Association Journal, The Globe and Mail and Understorey. Some of them have been told by her on stage, on radio, in hospitals, universities, museums. Personal story is a passion for Linda and every day, every encounter brings the possibility of more.
LYNN DAVIES is the author of three books of poetry, most recently for children, “So Imagine Me: Nature Riddles in Poetry” (Nimbus books). She lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick.
SHEREE FITCH is a multi-award-winning writer, speaker, educator and the author of over 30 books in a variety of genres. Since the publication of her first book, Toes in My Nose, in 1987, she’s travelled the globe as a visiting poet and storyteller, writing instructor and literacy educator. A popular presenter at literary festivals, libraries, and conferences, Fitch has received the Vicky Metcalf Award for a body of work inspirational to Canadian children and three honorary doctorates for her contribution to Canadian literature and issues affecting women and children. She owns Mabel Murple’s Book Shoppe and Dreamery, a seasonal book shoppe in rural Nova Scotia.
KAYLA GEITZLER is from Moncton, New Brunswick and proudly represents her city as its inaugural Anglophone Poet Laureate. Kayla holds an MA in English (Creative Writing) from UNB and runs her own writing consultation business. Her first poetry collection That Light Feeling Under Your Feet, won the WFNB Bailey Prize, made the Calgary Bestseller List, and was finalist for the 2018 Fiddlehead Poetry Prize and Alberta Publishers’ Award. The CBC has recognized Kayla as a poet who reflects “the enduring strength of the literary form in this country” and All Lit Up named her a “Rad Woman of Canadian Poetry.” Kayla is the host of the Attic Owl Reading Series, and co-editor of Cadence Voixfeminines Female Voices published by Frog Hollow Press, 2020.
LORRI NEILSEN GLENN is the author and editor of several poetry and non-fiction collections. Former Halifax Poet Laureate and Professor Emerita at the Mount, her latest book explores the lives of her Métis grandmothers.
LORETTA GOULD is a Mi’kmaq quilter/painter who loves bright, beautiful colours. She was born in 1976 and raised in Waycobah First Nation by her parents Annie Catherine (Katie) and Joseph Googoo. Loretta quilted for about 10 years after she had seen a quilt in a mall that she loved very much, but couldn’t afford, so decided to try to make a quilt. Thus began her manufacturing of art quilts on a professional level. Loretta’s sewing machine broke in 2013 and she was encouraged to try painting by Rolf Bouman. She has been painting full time ever since and is now a prominent Mik’maq artist. She has sold her paintings worldwide. Loretta’s art is her special way to express her spiritual feelings on canvas and her vision is to share the messages of her paintings with the world. Loretta is self-taught in both quilting and painting, being inspired by Jay Bell Redbird. She uses cotton fabrics with her quilts and acrylic medium paints for her canvas.
DORETTA GROENENDYK’s paintings come to life at the kitchen table (next to a pot of tea and an even larger pot of cookies). She works alongside her family in Canning, Nova Scotia.
Doretta graduated from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Upon graduation, she proceeded to teach, travel and tree plant. Now settled next to a vegetable garden and meadow, Doretta delights in the colours, lines and stories around her. The ideas float in, pictures dance, and the colours sparkle. There is a sense of story, whimsy and play in the images she creates. The colours are warm, bright and luminous.
Since living in the Annapolis Valley, Doretta has written and illustrated 14 children’s books (Nimbus and Acorn Press). Her widely known acrylic paintings are available in several maritime galleries and through private commission.
LUKE HATHAWAY is a poet, editor, essayist, librettist, and play-maker, who teaches creative writing and English literature at Saint Mary’s University in Halifax; under the name Amanda Jernigan, he published three books of poems — Groundwork, All the Daylight Hours, and Years, Months, and Days,the last of these named a best book of the year in The New York Times — as well as the chapbook The Temple. His latest book is the long poem New Year Letter.
LINDA JOHNS: For over 45 years, artist, author and naturalist Linda Johns has expressed her unique wisdom through paintings, drawings, linocuts, and sculpture, the latter primarily in found whalebone. Her inspirations flow from the wild places, creatures and feathered friends that encircle her life in rural Nova Scotia.
Johns is primarily self-taught, pursuing her own personal exploration in art history and analysis, mythology, symbolism, and metaphysics. She studied briefly at the Ontario College of Art and then more formally with the Canadian artist, Carl Schaefer, a true mentor. Her metaphorical artwork is grounded in images from the natural world, the creatures of land, air and sea, seasonal cycles of the sun and moon and primal energies of decay and renewal.
Her published prose writings (Nimbus, Goose Lane, McClelland & Stewart, Lyghtesome) have been based on her own nature notes and journal entries, with smaller, editioned books devoted to her poetry, also inspired by environmental concerns and an appreciation of Taoist hermit poets of China and later Japanese Zen poets who were astute observers of the natural world.
PETER JOWETT has lived in western, central, eastern and northern regions of this beautiful country. He and his family lived in to Antigonish Nova Scotia from 2005 – 2017. Since 1981, Peter’s love of Canada’s natural wonders led him to protect nature as an Alberta Park Ranger, a National Park Warden (AB, BC, NWT) and as a Federal Fisheries Officer (BC, ON, NS). His efforts have been professionally recognized with numerous awards such as the Meritorious Service Medal from the Governor General of Canada, Prix d’Excellence and the Queen’s Jubilee Medal. He is the principal author of Nahanni: The River Guide which ran its course with three editions. Peter has been a guest speaker in various venues in Canada and Scotland. He is an Accredited Photographer through the Professional Photographers of Canada for Wildlife and Landscape photography. http://www.peterjowett.ca; https://www.facebook.com/peterjowettphotography
TONJA GUNVALDSEN KLAASSEN is a poet, teacher, activist and hermit. She has published three collections of poetry, performed at OBEY unconventional music conventions and exhibited poems at the Anna Leonowens Gallery. She grew up on a graveyard quarter near Manitou Saskatchewan where she learned the secrets of yeast and how to make flapper pie and relish. She now lives in Halifax-K’jipuktuk.
CORY LAVENDER is a poet of mixed Black Loyalist and European descent, settled in Mi’kma’ki. His chapbook Lawson Roy’s Revelation came out with Gaspereau Press (2018), and his Ballad of Bernie “Bear” Roy is the first in a series of pamphlets from knife | fork | book (2020). His work has appeared in journals such as Riddle Fence and The New Quarterly, and is anthologized in Watch Your Head: Writers and Artists Respond to the Climate Crisis (Coach House Books, 2020).
NANCI LEE is a poet and adult educator living in K’jipuktuk (Halifax) and Tatamagouche. Nanci has published chapbooks Hsin (Thee Hellbox Press, 2016) and Preparation (Free Fall Magazine, 2016). Nanci has a book of poems, also Hsin, forthcoming with Brick Books. She has long been under the spell of the wilds of M’ikmaki (Nova Scotia).
Born in Newfoundland, GENEVIEVE LEHR lives and writes in Halifax. Her poetry has been published in a number of literary journals in Canada and abroad. She’s the editor of Come and I Will Sing You: A Newfoundland Song Book (University of Toronto Press, 1985; Reprinted 2003). Lehr is the author of the chapbook, The Design of Wings (Running the Goat Press, 2004), The Sorrowing House (Brick Books, 2004) and Stomata (Brick Books, 2016).
ANNICK MACASKILL’S poetry has appeared in Canadian Notes & Queries, Best Canadian Poetry 2019, This Magazine, The Stinging Fly, The Fiddlehead, Room Magazine, and Plenitude, among others. Her debut collection, No Meeting Without Body, was published by Gaspereau Press in 2018, and was selected as a finalist for the J.M. Abraham Poetry Award and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. Her second collection, Murmurations, was published by Gaspereau Press in the spring of 2020. She lives and writes in Kjipuktuk/Halifax, on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq people. Find her online at annickmacaskill.com
CORI MACINNIS is a self taught watercolour artist and a member of the Canadian Society of Painters in Watercolour (CSPWC). Primarily a portrait artist, she can be found working from her home studio in beautiful Jimtown, Antigonish County, where she lives with her three children. www.corimacinnis.ca
COLLEEN MACISAAC is a multidisciplinary artist based in Halifax/K’jipuktuk working in performance, illustration, animation, and theatre. The Artistic Producer of The Villains Theatre and Managing Director of 2b theatre company, Colleen loves small stories, and has been creating and posting daily art for over 2800 days at http://instagram.com/quietprocess. You can find Colleen’s work online at littlefoible.net.
PAM CALABREASE MACLEAN is an Antigonish, NS poet and playwright. She has two poetry collections: Twenty-four Names For Mother, Paper Journey Press, 2006; The Dead Can’t Dance, Ronsdale Press, 2009. Five of her plays have been professionally produced.
TIFFANY MORRIS is a Mi’kmaw editor and writer of speculative poetry and fiction. She is the author of the chapbook Havoc in Silence (Molten Molecular Minutiae, 2019). Her work has been featured in Room Magazine, Prairie Fire, and Augur Magazine, among others. She hikes, reads tarot, and hunts UFOs in K’jipuktuk (Halifax), Nova Scotia.
NOELLA MURPHY is a multi-disciplinary artist, currently finishing a Fine Arts degree at NSCAD. While studying theatre in Ireland, Noella also took a course in Art Therapy and started to run various groups focused on the arts for health’s sake. Running both theatre and art groups for Camphill Communities and L’arche Homes, Noella became interested in connecting the arts to increase community health. Noella got involved Arts Health Antigonish from the beginning, which gave her the chance to run art programs in hospitals and nursing homes, as well as after school programs. Developing her own art practice, Noella mostly focuses on botanical drawings, printmaking and paintings.
ANDREA POTTYONDY, SCA Art is my Truth, Art is a Healer, Art Makes Us Human
Andrea’s art is about life experience, sensory memory, seeking beauty in discarded matter, the act of gathering, sorting and combining to make a whole. Like a puzzle, she finds connections and brings the pieces together. Working mostly with water-based mediums, she may collage, assemble or simply use paint to create art, letting her intuition guide the process.
Born and raised in Quebec, Andrea also lived in Yukon Territory and presently resides in Nova Scotia. She studied art with the University of Southern California, NSCAD, and has taken workshops in Canada, the United States and Mexico.
She is a member of several art groups and collectives and volunteers as a docent at the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. Please visit her website: www.artarage for a full bio and future exhibits. www.facebook.com/AndreaPottyondyArt; thirdlakeart@gmail.com
ANNA QUON is a Halifax poet, novelist, visual artist and filmmaker who likes to make paintings and short animated films of her original poetry. She is also a middle-aged, mixed race maker of messes. She likes to swim, walk, and spend time with friends drinking coffee. Anna’s motto is “Be kind, be careful, be curious, but above all be kind.” anna.quon@gmail.com
JAY BELL REDBIRD is an Ojibway First Nation self-taught artist. Growing up, he was influenced by, and painted together with, world-renowned artists such as Norval Morrisseau, his uncle Leland Bell and his father Duke Redbird. As a teenager, Norval Morrisseau taught Jay about colours and their meanings and how they relate to Aboriginal language, history and culture. Jay’s uncle Leland Bell showed him techniques and shared traditional teachings and stories, explaining the meanings of the animal spirits. His father Duke Redbird taught him how to express his pride as an Aboriginal artist. Following those forming years, he continued to paint, learning more and finding his own voice in stories and visions that he shared through his paintings. They are vibrant in colours, stories and meanings. Jay has collectors around the world in private collections, in universities, colleges, schools, daycares, films and magazines. He worked in the film industry in Toronto for 8 years. Many actors encouraged him to rather pursue his painting carrier, as they saw Jay’s talent. He met Rolf Bouman in 2012 and has become a mentor for many of the Aboriginal artists of the Friends United initiative.
ANNE SIMPSON writes poetry, fiction, and non-fiction. Her most recent books are Speechless, a novel, and Experiments in Distant Influence, a book of essays. She has worked as a writer-in-residence at libraries and universities across Canada. She lives at the edge of an estuary in Antigonish, sharing space with bald eagles, herons, ravens, and the occasional fox.
SUZANNE STEWART is the author of The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons (2018). With an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and a PhD in English Literature, she currently teaches at St. Francis Xavier University. When not writing, reading, and teaching, Suzanne spends her time out-of-doors: running, hiking, walking, and cycling. Her journeys into the countryside, during all four seasons, inspire and shape her aesthetic experience of the world.
ANNA SYPEREK, born in England of Polish and English parents and raised in Oshawa,
Ontario, moved to Antigonish, Nova Scotia in 1971. She graduated with a BFA in painting and printmaking at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in 1980. Anna then settled back in the Antigonish area with her husband, filmmaker Peter Murphy, and together they raised three daughters.
Well known across the Maritimes for her large format landscape etchings, oils and watercolours, Anna also taught part time in the Art Department at St. Francis Xavier University for 26 years, where she also set up a community printmaking workshop.
Drawing, then painting and printmaking, have always been a way for me to make sense of the world. I see so intimately when I draw and have come to love the beauty of the ordinary world around me. In fact I see how extra-ordinary it really is.”
NANCY TURNIAWAN is a community artist interested in creating collaborative opportunities for young artists and adults to explore art making in public spaces. Her personal art ranges from using natural materials such as clay, wood, and pebbles, to photography of her surroundings. Her pebble mosaic bench, “Greeting Grandfather Sun” is located outside The People’s Place library in Antigonish, Nova Scotia.
Nancy is excited to contribute her experience of learning from nature, and making art that is impermanent. Many people think of sand castles, as an example of creating something for the pleasure of working with sand, knowing that it will fall away, due to sun, wind or water, a few hours later. Nancy has a Facebook page, Nancy Turniawan Art.
Both art pieces and poems for Acorn and Cattail were created in the springtime. Watching new growth and photographing the changes occurring in each ecosystem revealed the purpose of producing many seeds, with only a few seeds reaching the best location to grow.
ADELE MCFARLANE WILE is a visual artist and educator living in Antigonish County, Nova Scotia. She graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Art from the Nova Scotia Collage of Design University in 2006 and received her Bachelor of Education from St. Thomas University in 2011. She maintains her studio practice out of her home and teaches in the Art Department at St. Francis Xavier University.
McFarlane Wile’s work is about the interconnection between the natural world and the human psyche, investigating how environmental stimuli connect deeply with image making and storytelling. Animal forms, natural cycles, and human narratives heavily influence the imagery in her paintings. Sources of inspiration come from ecological essays, natural history, systems of supernatural or superstitious belief, and her own experiences in nature.
RITA WILSON is a writer, poet, teacher of young children, and gardener who lives on the banks of the Caribou River in Nova Scotia. She’s been published in, among others: Saltscapes, Arc Poetry Magazine, The Cumberland Review; and received the Atlantic Poetry Prize. Her book, A Pocket of Time, the poetic childhood of elizabeth bishop, was published by Nimbus in the Fall of 2019.
ANDREA SCHWENKE WYILE’s passion is picturebooks. A participant in the study and teaching of Children’s Literature for nearly 30 years, she has just launched a character who rhymes wisdom with nonsense at <www.widowwyile.com>.Her creative publications are in www.litmaglove.com/anthology/, Vallum Contemporary Poetry16.1; In/Words Magazine 13.3, The Hilt Magazine (issuu.com/thehilt) issues 1 & 3, and The Nashwaak Review vol 28/29. Email: andrea.schwenke.wyile@gmail.com or widowwyile@tutanota.com