OnWords
Middle-graders and teens, this is something new just for you! You’re invited to an afternoon of stories, sharing and selfies with two amazing Canadian authors: Lawrence Hill and Lisa Harrington. This is your chance to hear them read from their latest books and ask them about how they write, how they got published, what inspires them, and their tips for young writers. Where: the River John Fire Hall. When: Friday, July 1, 2022. Watch this space for more details!
Lawrence Hill
LAWRENCE HILL is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of ten books of fiction and nonfiction, including The Book of Negroes, which was made into a six-part TV mini-series, and The Illegal, both of which won CBC Canada Reads. His previous novels, Some Great Thing and Any Known Blood, became national bestsellers. Hill’s nonfiction work includes Blood: The Stuff of Life, the subject of his 2013 Massey Lectures, and the memoir Black Berry, Sweet Juice: On Being Black and White in Canada. In January 2022, HarperCollins Canada will publish Hill’s eleventh book -- the novel Beatrice and Croc Harry.
Hill’s volunteer work has included Crossroads International, the Black Loyalist Heritage Society, Book Clubs for Inmates, The Ontario Black History Society, and Walls to Bridges – a non-profit group offering university courses to incarcerated Canadians. A professor of creative writing at the University of Guelph, he has spent more than a decade volunteering in book clubs in federal penitentiaries. Through Walls to Bridges, he taught a third-year undergraduate memoir writing course to women incarcerated in the Grand Valley Institution for Women in Kitchener ON.
Currently, Hill is writing screenplays for a TV miniseries in development, as well as a new novel about the thousands of African-American soldiers who travelled from military bases in the Deep South to help build the Alaska Highway in northern British Columbia and Yukon during World War Two. He is a member of the Order of Canada, and a winner of the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and (for screenwriting) a co-winner of the NAACP Award and a Canadian Screen Award. He lives with his wife, the writer Miranda Hill, in Hamilton ON and in Woody Point, NL.
Lisa Harrington
Lisa Harrington dabbled in children’s stories before realizing that it was her teen years that lived most vividly in her memory – how it felt, the things that went on, the drama, the angst—the good, the bad, the ugly.
Her first novel, Rattled, was published in 2010 to critical praise, and her second, Live to Tell, won the Ann Connor Brimer Award for Children’s Literature 2013, the White Pine Award 2014, the Snow Willow Award 2014, and was shortlisted for the Arthur Ellis Award.
Her novel, Twisted, was shortlisted for the Canadian Library Association’s Book of the Year.
Her most recent novels, The Good Bye Girls, and The Big Dig, shortlisted for the Geoffrey Bilson Award for Historical fiction for Young People, focus on the funny and not so funny aspects of family and being a teenager. She is lucky to have two hilarious kids, Alexandra and William, who provide much inspiration for her story ideas. A lifelong resident of Nova Scotia, she lives in Halifax with her puppy, Hermione.
Visit Lisa online at lisaharrington.ca or on Facebook at Lisa Harrington-Author
Wayne Curtis
Books In Canada described his work as “A pleasure to read, for no detail escapes his discerning eye.” He is twice winner of the Richards Award for short fiction as well as the Woodcock Award, the CBC Drama Award, and A and B Grants from New Brunswick Arts Board, and The Canada Council for the Arts. Wayne’s latest short story collection is called, Winter Road, published in 2020.
Winter Road, by Wayne Curtis could be an easy, simple collection of nostalgic glimpses into New Brunswick’s not-so-distant history – except they stir the reader to recognition that, despite life’s imperfections, all will be well. The book left me with a general sense of having revisited old haunts and hauntings, and surviving them all happily. –
Monica Graham, Sundridge. NS
Amy Spurway
Amy Spurway was born and raised on Cape Breton Island, where, at the age of eleven, she landed her first writing and performing gigs with CBC Radio.
Her work has appeared in Today's Parent, the Toronto Star, Babble, and Elephant Journal, as well as in the realms of advertising, marketing, non-profit and corporate communications, education, health, and politics.


Crow, by Amy Spurway is a tale of how Stacey Fortune goes down the road, leaves Cape Breton for an obligatory life in Toronto, and then comes back up the road…returning to the island, her mother’s trailer, iffy high school friends, enemies and memories that have stuck in her craw. Because that’s what this island does to you. You always need to come home to get your head right. –
Lesley Crewe, Homeville, NS
Crow, by Amy Spurway Stacey Fortune, AKA ‘Crow,’ escaped her small village on Cape Breton Island as soon as possible when she was 18 years old. For twenty years she made a fairly satisfying life for herself in Toronto. Now at 38 years old she is back home living in her mother’s trailer and waiting to die. In the blink of an eye, she has been given a horrendous diagnosis which turned her life on a dime. She finds herself right back in the life she left 20 years ago, with the same dysfunctional family and friends. However she is on a quest to learn more about her history and identity, as more and more things come to her knowledge. It could have been a very sad book, if it weren’t for the fact that typical Cape Breton humour and the ability to make light of one’s circumstances shines throughout. I liked this book very much. –
Reviewed by Brenda White
Pasha Malla
PASHA MALLA is the author of five works of poetry and fiction, including the story collection The Withdrawal Method and the novel People Park. His fiction has won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, the Trillium Book Prize, an Arthur Ellis Award and several National Magazine awards. His work has also been long-listed for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Pasha’s latest novel, Kill the Mall, was released in February 2021.
Stephen Maher
The Writers Workshop "Fiction Thrillers" will be led by Stephen Maher, a journalist and novelist originally from Truro, Nova Scotia. Steve is an interviewer for the 2021 MainStage. An award-winning investigative journalist and political columnist, he is the author of three novels, Deadline, Salvage and Social Misconduct. He makes his home on the South Shore of Nova Scotia.
Suzanne Stewart
Suzanne Stewart’s writing has appeared in The Dalhousie Review, The Goose, The Globe and Mail, Saltscapes Magazine, The Antigonish Review, English Studies, Essays on Canadian Writing, The Craft Factor, and Newest Review. She has published a creative non-fiction book, The Tides of Time: A Nova Scotia Book of Seasons (Pottersfield 2018). Having completed an MFA in Creative Nonfiction and a PhD in English literature, Suzanne currently teaches at St. Francis Xavier University. Read by the Sea welcomes Suzanne as a MainStage interviewer.


Lana MacEachern
Lana MacEachern is a library technician and former journalist/columnist whose work has appeared in Nova Scotian daily and weekly newspapers and The Seniors' Advocate. A longtime Read by the Sea fan and frequent festival interviewer, she is now a member of the festival's organizing committee. Lana writes poetry and creative non-fiction and is working up the courage to submit her work to literary journals. She lives on Nova Scotia's Northumberland shore.