Nominated for the 19th annual Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children's Literature:

Joanne Jefferson, Lightning and Blackberries
Nimbus, 2008 ISBN 978-1551096544

Seventeen-year-old Elizabeth Evans is the privileged and naïve only child of prominent New Englanders, part of a group of Planters who settled in Nova Scotia following the deportation of the Acadian people. As a teenager, she is leading a carefree life in the Annapolis Valley, tending to her cows on the family farm, daydreaming by the brook, and resisting her mother’s attempts to refine her manners and marry her off. She thinks nothing will ever change, but a stranger’s arrival at Evans Hall and a chance meeting with a mysterious Acadian girl in the woods nearby turn Elizabeth’s carefree life upside down. When she learns the truth about the history of the farm she loves so well, she realizes nothing can ever be the same.

Joanne Jefferson was born and raised in Halifax and now makes her home in West LaHave, Nova Scotia. Her poetry, short fiction, and non-fiction writing appear in a variety of Canadian publications. She leads writing workshops for young people at the Tatamagouche Centre and in schools around Nova Scotia. Joanne’s other passions include boating, music, and baseball. Lightning & Blackberries is her first novel.

Hi-res pictures: cover, author

More information: Nimbus, WFNS, CM Magazine (review)

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Jill MacLean, The Nine Lives of Travis Keating
Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2008 ISBN 978-1554551040

Just 365 days — that's how long Travis has agreed to his dad's experiment of moving to a tiny coastal community in Newfoundland. But in no time he's counting those days. Only a few kids show interest in him: Hector, a strange boy who grunts; and Prinny, a girl as scraggly as her ponytail. And then there's Hud, the school's meanest bully, who's just itching for a fight with the new "townie." But there are worse things than loneliness. When Travis discovers a colony of abandoned cats and attempts to care for them himself, it isn't long before he's in over his head. Who will help him keep the starving animals safe from the likes of Hud and his pals? And how many of his lives will Travis use up in the process?

Jill MacLean is the author of a collection of poetry, The Brevity of Red, which was shortlisted for the Atlantic Poetry Prize and the Acorn-Plantos Award. She has also published a history of Prince Edward Island, Jean Pierre Roma: of the Company of the East of Isle St. Jean. Jill lives in Bedford, Nova Scotia.

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More information: WFNS, author's website, CM Magazine (review)

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Philip Roy, The Submarine Outlaw
Ronsdale Press, 2008 ISBN: 978-1-55380-058-3

What happens when a fearless young explorer teams up with a junkyard genius and builds a submarine? Going to sea with an unusual crew, a strangely intelligent seagull with attitude and a dog that nobody wanted, Alfred unwittingly becomes the ‘Submarine Outlaw’, discovering that the sea is a busy place. Escaping from the coastguard when he is mistaken for a Russian spy sub, rescuing a family on a sailboat in a storm, and running from thieves who are after the gold coins he has raised from the floor of the Louisburg harbour — Alfred learns that a modern explorer must keep his wits about him as he sails on the high seas, or beneath them.

Philip Francis Roy grew up in Antigonish, Nova Scotia. The ocean was his back yard and now features in many of the stories he writes. His university studies included music and history, but he also knew from an early age that he wanted to write novels. Submarine Outlaw, his first published book, is the result of a lifelong fascination with submarines and a secret desire to build one. “If teens enjoy reading Submarine Outlaw half as much as I enjoyed writing it,” says Philip, “I will feel very rewarded indeed.” Philip has many other stories waiting in dry dock, including an exciting sequel to Submarine Outlaw, on the launch pad soon.

Hi-res pictures: cover, author

More information: Ronsdale Press, CM Magazine (review), 2009 WIllow Awards Nominee

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Nominated for the 12th Annual Atlantic Poetry Prize:

Brent MacLaine, Shades of Green
Acorn Press, 2008 ISBN: 978-1894838351

The poems in Brent MacLaine’s Shades of Green consistently demonstrate a keen ear for the music in words, an observant eye giving rise to precise description and an inventive and playful touch with metaphor. MacLaine can handle big ideas, deftly casting the abstract in concrete terms. His poems are full of surprising and lovely juxtapositions. He can be funny and profound at the same moment. Shades of Green reveals Brent MacLaine to be a masterful poet in fine form.

Shades of Green is Brent MacLaine’s third collection of poetry which includes Wind and Root (Véhicule Press) and These Fields Were Rivers (Goose Lane Editions). He’s also been widely published in literary journals and such anthologies as Landmarks: An Anthology of New Atlantic Poetry of the Land and Coastlines: The Poetry of Atlantic Canada. Brent’s teaching career has taken him to universities in Vancouver, Edmonton and Singapore. Since 1991, he has been a professor of English at UPEI, where he has received the prestigious 3M Award for excellence in teaching. A fifth generation Islander, he lives today in Rice Point, PEI, in a new house that stands next door to the vacant MacLaine family homestead.

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More information: Acorn Press, The Buzz (2000 article)

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Sue Sinclair, Breaker
Brick, 2008 ISBN: 978-1894078665

Sue Sinclair is the direct inheritor of the great early twentieth century German poet, Rilke: she is possessed of an intense lyrical vision, steeped in wonder at the existence of the world, and a kind of grief at our inability to lose ourselves in it completely. Her perception is acutely focused and rigorous; and she is vitally self-aware. She is not afraid of words like "beauty" or "being" yet; because of the intensity of her vision, she never uses them as clichés. Her gift for metaphor is astonishing.

Sue Sinclair has written three previous books of poetry, Secrets of Weather & Hope, Mortal Arguments, and The Drunken Lovely Bird. Her work has been nominated for awards including the Gerald Lampert and Pat Lowther Awards and the Atlantic Book Prize for Poetry. Secrets of Weather & Hope was a Globe 100 title.

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More information: Brick Books, Wikipedia, Véhicule Press, The Literary Addict (review)

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Alan R. Wilson, Sky Atlas
Fitzhenry & Whiteside, 2008 ISBN: 978-1554550852

Sky Atlas, based on the 88 constellations, is a sequence of 88 sonnets: some are classic Petrarchan, others are more subversive in form, a form Alan refers to as hypersonnets or prose sonnets. In the same way that the heavens are seasonal, so is this atlas, with 22 sonnets in each of the spring, summer, fall and winter sections. Much of Alan’s stargazing is grounded in earthy roots — Ursa Major padding through a terrain punctuated with shopping malls, or Venus rising amid a litter of washed-up prophylactics, styrofoam packing and pop cans. Alan Wilson’s is a precisely observed world, rich with order, rife with incipient craziness.

Alan R. Wilson was born in Moncton, grew up in Woodstock and did an undergraduate degree in physics at UNB before pursuing graduate studies in BC. Trained in physics and astronomy — as well as in creative writing — Wilson currently works as an analyst and statistician at the University of Victoria and makes frequent trips home. He is the author of two previous books of poetry: Animate Objects (Turnstone Press) and Counting to 100 (Wolsak & Wynn). His novel, Before the Flood (Cormorant), was shortlisted for the Ethel Wilson Prize and the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, and won the 2000 Books in Canada/Chapters Fist Novel Award. Today, when not attempting to keep up with his four year old daughter, Alan is editing his second novel, Lucifer’s Hair.

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More information: Fitzhenry & Whiteside, Toronto Star (review)

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Nominated for the 32nd annual Evelyn Richardson Prize for Non-fiction:

Marq de Villiers, Dangerous World: Natural Disasters, Manmade Catastrophes, and the Future of Human Survival
Viking, 2008 ISBN: 978-0670065684

Tsunami, earthquake, volcano, hurricane, pandemic — are these and other natural calamities more probable and more frequent than they were? Are things getting worse? If so, what can we do about it? Are the boundaries between natural and human-caused calamities blurring? Are we ourselves part of the problem? In Dangerous World, de Villiers examines these questions in a time when we truly need to understand the dangers that we face.

Born in South Africa, Marq de Villiers is a veteran Canadian journalist and the author of eight books, including Windswept: The Story of Wind and Weather, Water: The Fate of Our Most Precious Resource (winner of the Governor General’s Award for Non-fiction), Down the Volga in a Time of Troubles, and has co-written with Sheila Hirtle, Into Africa: A Journey Through the Ancient Empires, and A Dune Adrift: The Strange Origins and Curious History of Sable Island, which won the Evelyn Richardson Award in 2005. He has worked as a foreign correspondent in Moscow and through Eastern Europe, and spent many years as editor and then publisher of Toronto Life magazine. Most recently, he was Editorial Director of WHERE Magazines International.

Hi-res pictures: cover, author (by Paul Orenstein)

More information: WFNS, Wikipedia, Quill & Quire (review)

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Stephen Kimber, Loyalists & Layabouts
Doubleday, 2008 ISBN: 978-0385661720

The few hundred loyalists who gathered at Roubalet’s Tavern in New York on the night of Saturday, November 16, 1782, shared a vision of the future intended to sustain them through the nightmare of the present. Abandoned by the king to whom they had promised their loyalty, unwelcome in the land that had so recently been theirs, they had no choice but to flee. Their dream was to build a new and improved New York City. They would do this on the rocky shores of Roseway Bay, on the south coast of Nova Scotia, beside one of the best harbours in the world. The city would be cosmopolitan, but more refined, more royal, more loyal, and certainly more exclusive than the one they were now preparing to leave behind forever. At first, it seemed as if their dream would come true. Within the decade, however, Shelburne was a wasteland of abandoned hopes and crumbling edifices.

Stephen Kimber is an award-winning writer, editor, and broadcaster. He is the author of one novel, Reparations, and five non-fiction books, including the bestselling Sailors, Slackers and Blind Pigs: Halifax at War. Stephen Kimber is the Rogers Communications Chair in Journalism at the University of King's College in Halifax, Canada

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More information: Author's Website, WFNS, Globe and Mail (review)

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William D. Naftel, Halifax At War: Searchlights, Squadrons and Submarines 1939-1945
Formac, 2008 ISBN 978-0887807398

From early September 1939, Halifax was at war. For the next six years, the city was uniquely affected by the war’s events. Using a rich blend of historical, biographic and archival sources, Bill Naftel provides a new perspective on the impact of the war on Halifax, but also on Canada and Canadians. Incredible demands were placed on Halifax, which was barely able to cope as thousands of soldiers and sailors streamed through every day. Thousands of others arrived to take up war-time work. Welcomed initially for the infusion of prosperity, the influx created problems for everyone with liquor as a flashpoint in a town where archaic liquor laws prevented a sailor from enjoying the rare day off.

Born during the Second World War, Bill spent his first five years in Edmonton while his father, an officer in the Royal Canadian Navy, shepherded convoys back and forth across the North Atlantic. By 1952, Bill was enrolled in Tower Road School in Halifax, followed by Cornwallis Jr. High, QEH, King’s College and Dalhousie University. He began working in the Public Archives of Canada, followed by Parks Canada, returning to Halifax in 1975 to assume the position of Senior Historian and Chief of History for the Atlantic Region. Since retiring from public service in 1990, Bill has been hard at work researching and writing, releasing a monograph, The Building of All Saints Cathedral (St. Agnes Press, 2006), Prince Edward’s Legacy (Formac, 2005) and most recently, Halifax at War.

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More information: Formac

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Nominated for the 19th annual Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Prize:

Douglas Arthur Brown, Quintet
Key Porter Books, 2008 ISBN: 978-1552639979

Adrian, Rory, and Cameron are identical triplets summoned home to Cape Breton by the sudden death of their parents. Inseparable in youth, they’ve drifted apart as adults, and after the funeral they agree to keep in touch through journals in which each recounts the steps that led him away from the other two. At every critical step looms the shadow of Talbot, the oldest brother, and the secrets he’s hoarded for a generation.

Douglas Arthur Brown is also the author of the novel A Deadly Harvest; a collection of short fiction, The Komodo Dragon and Other Stories; and two children’s books, The Magic Compass and Archibald's Boo-boo. He lived in Toronto and Copenhagen for many years and now lives in his native Cape Breton.

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More information: WFNS, The Coast (review), Quill and Quire (review), The Writers' Union of Canada (Bio and Review Quotes)

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Ian Colford, Evidence
Porcupine's Quill, 2008 ISBN: 978-0-88984-303-5

This debut collection of short stories involves Kostandin Bitri, a wanderer who has been uprooted by war from an unnamed eastern European country. As he moves first to Western Europe and then to North America looking for a place to live and for an identity, Bitri observes the societies he restlessly inhabits with an uneasy, distrustful eye. As an outsider, he witnesses corruption and banality, the dangers of ignorance in a brutal world, the need for caution and disguise. His observations amount to a relentless deconstruction of power relationships: the power of the police over a terrorized population in an authoritarian state, of wealth over poverty in the bourgeois cultures of the West, of men over women, adults over children, lies over truth.

Ian Colford’s work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Event, The Fiddlehead, The Dalhousie Review, Grain, Canadian Fiction Magazine, The Journey Prize Anthology, and others. Travels to Greece, Portugal, Turkey and Italy have laid a foundation upon which much of his recent fiction is constructed. He lives in Halifax and works as a librarian at Dalhousie University.

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More information: WFNS, Porcupine's Quill, The Star (review)

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Sara Tilley, Skin Room
Pedlar, 2008 ISBN: 978-1897141205

Skin Room is a novel told from the point of view of Teresa Norman at two distinct times in her life, but the voices of precocious 12-year old Teresa Norman and of her sophisticated older self are both refreshingly straightforward and as startling as a snow storm in summer. The clarity and confidence of this first time novelist’s narrative voice is breathtaking. Chapters alternate between the bookish pre-teen whose favourite novel is Wuthering Heights and the older Teresa, ten years later trying unsuccessfully to start an independent life. Coming of age has not been more searingly rendered.

Winner of both the 2004 Newfoundland and Labrador Percy Janes First Novel for unpublished manuscript award, and the 2006 inaugural Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers, Sara Tilley was first published (as an illustrator) at age 8 in OWL Magazine! Though born in St. John’s, she grew up in rural and isolated Newfoundland, Labrador and Nunavut communities. She graduated from York with a BFA in Theatre and is engaged in ongoing study and development of Pochinko Clown though Mask techniques. She has written, co-written and co-created ten plays, and in 2006 received the Rhonda Payne Award, which celebrates a woman contributing to the development of theatre in Newfoundland and Labrador.

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More information: the scope (interview), Compulsive Overreader (blog review), The Danforth Review, Quill and Quire (review)

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