I am delighted that the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia asked me to team up with best-selling author Sarah Sawler to give a series of workshops entitled “So You Want to be Published”. We will be giving the workshop at various locations around Nova Scotia in April and May 2017. Here is a link to the registration information on the first of those workshops, which will be in Halifax. Details on the others will soon be available.

http://writers.ns.ca/workshops/so-you-want-be-published-halifax.html

Thanks to Mike Hunter of Cape Breton University Press for making this post about my Writer-in-Residence term in Fairhope, AL.

http://cbup.ca/blog/three-month-residency-for-author-a-j-b-johnston/

Something I’m looking forward to once the spring gets here is a series of Professional Development workshops being planned by the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia.

The WFNS will be organizing one called “So You Want to Be Published”, with Sarah Sawler (author of many pieces but best known for the best-selling 100 Things You Don’t Know about Nova Scotia) and I teaming up to deliver our thoughts on all that could be covered under such a heading. The idea is that it will be a travelling road show, with stops in Halifax, Yarmouth, Wolfville, Antigonish and Sydney. Details have not yet to be worked out for specific dates and venues. (Most likely timing is late April and early May.) The PD sessions will be open to WFNS members and non-members alike.

I always like travelling around NS. What will make this travel even better than usual will be the chance to meet a wide range of people, talk about writing for publication and hearing about various projects!

With strange things afoot in Washington today, maybe it’s a good time to say a bit more about something closer to home — the new exhibit the Nova Scotia Museum has in the works to mark Canada 150.

It will be a travelling exhibit that tells the stories of an inspiring cast of women and men in Nova Scotia who overcame barriers and stood out in remarkable ways since 1867. Some names people will immediately recognize; others I think not. There was an advisory committee involved to make sure that the selections reflected the various regions and cultural communities. In addition, we aimed to come close to a 50/50 split between men and women. A lot to juggle, to be sure, but what’s better than a good challenge?

Though the period was 150 years, we managed to come up with 16 decades, beginning with the 1860s and ending with the 2010s. Within each decade we came up with three people, so 48 individuals in total. However, not everyone gets into the final exhibit. One of each group of three per decade was selected to be included, but the other two have go up for a vote by the public. That means the final exhibit will present the stories (plus images and related artifacts) of 16 x 2 = 32 people plus two theme elements on WW1 and WW2.

If you’d like to have your say when the voting comes — to show your pride and enthusiasm for for a particular barrier-breaker, Cape Bretoner, Truronian, Acadian, Mi’kmaq, African Nova Scotian or GLBT individual — you will be encouraged to do exactly that. The voting will be done online for roughly a month, from late February to late March. The precise details are being finalized as to how that will work.

The exhibit is slated to open at the Nova Scotia Museum shortly before Canada Day. It will then — in whole or in part — travel around the province.

It has been a great project to work on. There have been so very many inspiring people who helped transform Nova Scotia over the past 150 years.

I’ll post more information as it becomes available.

Believe it or not, I have had a few people ask me when the fourth (and final) Thomas Pichon Novel will be out. I think my answer has always been I’m not sure — it’s at an early stage. A more accurate answer might have been it was stranded on an island somewhere in my subconscious. Well, now I shall give a different answer. I can’t yet give a date, nor a publisher, but I can say that particular project — Thomas 4 — is next up on my to-do list.

I needed a break after writing the first three in four years — and so I turned to other writing instead. Then came the news that the series’ publisher (Cape Breton University Press) was winding down, coinciding with publisher Mike Hunter’s retirement. That combination meant I put figuring out the final chapter in Thomas’ story on hold — a rather long hold of a couple of years.

But now, as 2017 nears and the two major exhibits I have been working on in recent months wind down, I suddenly find T4 pushing its way into my consciousness. Welcome back.

Who might be interested in publishing it with CBU Press gone, I have no idea. Nor at this point does it matter. What does is that the story be told. I’m looking forward to figuring that out — and eventually to adding a fourth cover image below.

I’m not going to reveal who has been picked, but the public in Nova Scotia will begin to find out early in 2017. In fact, they will be urged to vote.

For the past few months, I have been happily working on two projects, one of which I allude to in this note. That task was for the Nova Scotia Museum, with my role being to research and write short biographies on a wide range of people who did something significant to change or inspire Nova Scotia in the period from Confederation to today. We ended up with sixteen decades from the 1860s to the 2010s. The challenge was to select three individuals from each decade (hence 48 in total). There was an advisory committee who weighed in, and we all agreed the target should be to have approximately 50% women and 50% men. We also agreed that we would stay away from politicians (with two exceptions) and major celebrities. Instead, our focus was on individuals with fascinating stories who overcame barriers or handicaps and went on to achieve and inspire.

The NS Museum will begin the reveal sometime in January, one decade at a time. People will be asked to vote online for one of two choices per decade. The third will already have been slotted into the exhibit to come by Museum staff. Then before summer, there will be an exhibit presenting the final 32 individuals, plus two theme banners on the First and Second World Wars.