Lindsay Ruck is an author and editor from Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. Her first book, Winds of Change: The Life and Legacy of Calvin W. Ruck, was published in 2014 and was nominated for a Dartmouth Book Award. Lindsay has proudly contributed to a number of collaborative works, including The Nova Scotia Book of Fathers, Nova Scotia Love Stories and an updated edition of Canadian bestseller The Black Battalion: Canada’s Best-Kept Military Secret. Against the Grain is a biography of former Nova Scotia premier Dr. John Savage, and was released in 2019. Lindsay lived in Ottawa for over a decade and studied journalism at Carleton University’s School of Journalism before returning to Halifax to continue her writing career. Like her grandfather, the late Senator Calvin Ruck, Lindsay is a storyteller, and does her best to inspire others through the written word. Amazing Black Atlantic Canadians is Lindsay’s first book for younger readers. Lindsay lives in Dartmouth with her husband and two children. Visit lindsayruck.ca for more information on current titles and upcoming events.

Chris Benjamin, author and former SSPL Writer in Residence, hosts this years Pitch the Publisher event. We'll have twelve authors pitching their books to publishers from Nimbus Publishing and Formac Publishing Company. Each author gets three minutes to tell their story. Come watch these brave folks let publishers know why their books should make it to a shelf near you.

Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging.

Francesca's debut novel, Butter Honey Pig Bread was longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize, was a finalist for CBC's 2021 Canada Reads competition, is a finalist for a 2021 Lambda Literary Award, shortlisted for the 2021 Governor General's Award, and the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

Ronan O’Driscoll’s novel "Poor Farm" follows two people on the autism spectrum–one the child of the narrator, and the other a boy confined to a Poor Farm in Nova Scotia in the 19th century. The tale explores the attitudes and assumptions that contorted and contort the way we deal with neurodivergent people, and take us into the Dickensian grimness of Victorian-era poor houses and official policies for “dealing with” the poor and the weak. Ronan's first novel, Chief O'Neill, was recently published in Ireland and covers the incredible life of the nineteenth century Chicago police chief who saved Irish music.

Morgan Murray (he/him) is a settler from the same backwoods central Alberta village as figure-skating legend Kurt Browning (Caroline, AB in Treaty 6 territory). He now lives in the backwoods of Cape Breton (Unama'ki) with his wife, cartoonist Kate Beaton, and growing family. In between, he has been a rancher, a roustabout, a reporter, a tour guide, a schemer, a variety show host, and a student in Caroline, Calgary, Paris, Prague, Montreal, Chicoutimi, and St. John's. His first novel, Dirty Birds has been compared to Kurt Vonnegut, and has been a finalist for the Leacock Medal for Humour, longlisted for CBC Canada Reads 2021, a finalist for three Atlantic Book Awards (winning the Best Atlantic Published Book) and the ReLit Awards, and won silver in the 2020 International Forewords Indies Award for Humour. It has also made his parents proud even though it’s full of cursing and carrying on.

Marq de Villiers is a journalist and author who never found a real job and so just kept on writing, a few million words by now, for newspapers, magazines and books (14 and counting, with a few ghost-writing gigs tacked on). Along the way he has lived in some interesting places (Cape Town, Moscow, Asturias in northern Spain, London and a short stint in Timbuktu), picked up a few awards (among them the Alan Paton Award for writing about South Africa, a Governor General’s Award for Non Fiction for his first book on Water and another GG short-list for an appreciation of pinot noir, plus the Canadian Science Writers Association Award and a nod from the Julia Child and James Beard awards for literary food writing) and, not incidentally, married the art director and editor Sheila Hirtle, who has saved his ass on numerous occasions with pointed advice and sometimes ruthless editing.

DEVYN KAIZER studied history at Acadia University and is the Research Assistant at the Fisheries Museum of the Atlantic in Lunenburg. Her work focuses on the Bluenose, and she spent the 2017 sailing season as the travelling interpreter for Bluenose II. She sits on the Board of Directors of the Lunenburg Heritage Society. Devyn's book "Bluenose: On Board A Legend" documents the beautiful Tall Ship Bluenose, now a sailing ambassador for the province of Nova Scotia, and tells the dramatic story of the battles and triumphs of original Bluenose.

David Huebert’s fiction debut, Peninsula Sinking, won a Dartmouth Book Award, was shortlisted for the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize, and was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. In 2020, David published his second book of poetry, Humanimus. A new story collection, Chemical Valley, will appear in fall 2021. David teaches at The University of King’s College in K’jipuktuk/Halifax, where he lives with his partner and their two children.

Growing up on the south shore of Nova Scotia, Tyler LeBlanc wasn’t fully aware of his family’s Acadian roots — until a chance encounter with an Acadian historian prompted him to delve into his family history. LeBlanc’s discovery that he could trace his family all the way to the time of the Acadian Expulsion and beyond forms the basis of this compelling account of Le Grand Dérangement.

Montreal-born, Lesley Crewe is a best-selling author, columnist, screenwriter, and key-note speaker living in Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. She has published twelve books in the past sixteen years, including Amazing Grace, Shoot Me, Hit & Mrs, Kin, Her Mother’s Daughter, Chloe Sparrow and Ava Comes Home. Her first novel, Relative Happiness was short-listed for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award in 2006. The novel was adapted into a movie of the same name, which debuted in 2015, going to film festivals all over the world and winning Best Picture at the Nova Scotia Screen Awards that year.