AUTHORS 2025

July 4, 2025 Friday @ 7:30 pm Sojourner Story: Travelling Liminal Spaces Home

HEIDI WICKS

Heidi Wicks has written for Riddle Fence, Newfoundland Quarterly and The Globe and Mail. Her debut novel, Melt (2020), was featured in the Globe and Mail's Hot Summer Reads list and received a silver medal IPPY (Independent Publisher) award. She received the 2019 Cox and Palmer Creative Writing Award. She is featured in short fiction collection Hard Ticket and the creative nonfiction collection, Best Kind. She lives in her beloved hometown of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador

Here

One house, one hundred years - Here is a collection of interconnected short stories that bend time with a complex and varied cast of characters passing through a single mansion in Newfoundland, confronting the ghosts of family, perseverance, redemption, and survival.

Here is a collection of interconnected short stories that trails the inhabitants of a colonial mansion on Circular Road in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador, over a span of 100 years. Aristocrats, hippies, housemaids, an all-girl rock band, a politician, a theologian, a biologist, a ballerina, a crow - over the decades, the house has a way of bending time for its varied occupiers, making readers question how our histories shape us and whether we can ever truly escape, or make peace with, the ghosts of the past.

MONICA KIDD

Monica Kidd is a multidisciplinary writer, an award-winning journalist and filmmaker, and physician. The Crane is her third novel. She has also published five books of poetry and non-fiction. she went to medical school at Memorial University of Newfoundland and now works as a family doctor with a focus on child & maternal health, equity, and medical humanities. She has teaching appointments at the University of Calgary and Memorial University, and is an Associate Editor of Humanities at the Canadian Medical Association Journal. She is a mom of three and lives in Calgary however she gets back to St. John’s as much as possible. 

The Crane

The Crane follows the difficult choices confronting someone who cannot go on being lied to and explores how they carry on in the face of hardship. 

It’s 1968 and James Anderson’s twin brother Dave has just been killed in the Vietnam war. Knowing his turn is next, James turns his back on his family’s military legacy, evading the draft and travelling to Newfoundland to fulfill a promise his brother made to a fellow soldier. Unwittingly swept into...  an intergenerational family secret while on assignment for a St. John’s newspaper, James finds something in Newfoundland that could just save his life.   

ANDY JONES

Andy Jones has been a professional writer and actor for over forty years. He has written five critically acclaimed one-man comedy shows. He is well known as one of the members of the groundbreaking Newfoundland comedy troupe CODCO, in both its theatrical and television incarnations, and as a writer for CBC’s Kids in the Hall series. He has written six children’s books rooted in Newfoundland folk culture. Andy’s numerous awards include two Gemini awards, election to the Newfoundland and Labrador Arts Council Hall of Honour, the BMO Winterset Award, Best Performance at the Atlantic Film Festival in Halifax, and the ACTRA Award of Excellence for Lifetime Achievement.

Actor Needs Restraint!

Three plays from the repertoire of iconic Newfoundland and Labrador playwright, actor, and member of the groundbreaking Newfoundland comedy troupe CODCO, Andy Jones.

Based on Jones' well-known epistolary radio series, An Evening with Uncle Val is a set of comic reportages from the perspective of a retired outport-dweller now living with his family in St. John's. Uncle Val is sometimes bemused, sometimes outraged by modern life; he has charmed readers over the decades with his stalwart heart concealed in a curmudgeon's exterior.

Out of the Bin and King o' Fun are zany, fragmented, occasionally philosophical, always hilarious renditions of contemporary life that demonstrate the versatility of one of Canada’s most talented and beloved theatremakers.

July 6, 2025, Saturday Panel 11:00 am - Into Headwinds: Moving Past Fixed Positions

Craig Francis Power

Craig Francis Power (he/him) is a St. John's-based multidisciplinary visual artist and the award-winning author of three previous novels: Blood Relatives, The Hope, and Skeet Love. Total Party Kill is his first collection of poetry.

TOTAL PARTY KILL

A raw, beautifully-composed collection exploring addiction, trauma, poverty, and the journey toward recovery and spirituality through the vernacular and iconography of the popular roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. Total Party Kill (TPK): tabletop roleplaying slang for the situation of all characters dying in the same in-game encounter.

At turns nightmarish, hilarious, brutally honest, and heart-breaking, TPK maps an unforgettable course into the fantastic dark of back-alley dive-bars, demonic underworlds, various rock bottom floors, and a whole host of monsters, both imagined and frighteningly real.

TPK is a strange and deadly beast combining the imagery of Dungeons & Dragons with a real, life-or-death struggle for sobriety. Entirely unique in perspective and voice, the autobiographical speaker within changes fluidly between the poet, a variety of D&D characters, and combinatio... ns of both. The text within comprises a genre-bending quest where nothing—especially continued sobriety—is for certain. Operating less like traditional poetry and more like brief monologues or confessions—but still concentrating on metaphor, meter, and sound—TPK will appeal not only to lovers of the world’s bestselling roleplaying game, nor just to lovers of poetry, but for anyone whose life has been touched by addiction.  

SHARON KING-CAMPBELL

Sharon King-Campbell is a theatre and literary artist based in Ktaqmkuk, colonially known as Newfoundland. She was the 2017 recipient of the Rhonda Payne Award, was longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2020, and is a four-time winner of the Arts and Letters Awards in fiction, dramatic script, and poetry. Her collection of poetry, This Is How It Is, was published in 2021. Her plays Original and Give Me Back have reached audiences throughout Newfoundland and Labrador and mainland Canada. 

DAYBOIL

With razor-sharp acuity and snappy language, Dayboil centres on a community in crisis––a kitchen-table comedy that quickly takes a dark turn.

Four middle-aged women meet at Kathy’s house in rural Newfoundland for their weekly cup of tea and gossip when tragic news disrupts their usual banter: Kathy’s husband has killed himself. Abruptly, the threads that hold their comfortable community life together begin to snap, and they find themselves exposed by the unravelling of their social fabric.

Darkly funny and deeply touching, Dayboil explores the rigidity of gender roles that prevent men from seeking help and lock women into caretaking positions, as well as the emotional and physical fallout that can result.  

ANDY JONES

Andy Jones returns to moderate the discussion panel on Saturday morning. His Don’t Give Up on Me, Dad is actor/writer Andy Jones’s very personal story about the insight, courage, and unique humour of his son Louis as he battled with the mental and emotional anguish that led to his suicide IN 2014.

This one-man show is Andy’s heartfelt and sometimes humorous analysis of Louis’ long journey through the health care system. In this new work, Andy lends his voice to the rising cry for compassion, care, and a quantum leap in funding for research into mental illness.

DON’T GIVE UP ON ME DAD

Don’t Give Up on Me, Dad serves as a poignant reminder of the need for empathy in society. By sharing his family’s story and his son’s journey, Andy hopes to foster greater understanding and awareness of mental health’s impact on individuals and their loved ones. As the play prepares to take the stage, it aims to inspire audiences to prioritize mental well-being, embrace support systems, and break down the stigma surrounding mental health. Together, we can create a more inclusive and empathetic society.

July 5, 2025 7:00 pm - Echolocation: Navigating the Darkness

YVONNE RUMBOLT-JONES

Yvonne Jean Rumbolt-Jones was born and raised and has spent her life in Labrador. Of Indigenous descent, she grew up in the isolated Indigenous-settler community of Mary’s Harbour in Labrador in the ’70s and ’80s. Leaving home for college at 17, she worked as a journalist for the Robinson-Blackmore chain of weekly papers, and later the Evening Telegram. Jones has been the mayor of Mary’s Harbour, an MHA and party leader in the provincial House of Assembly, and the first MP elected under Justin Trudeau’s leadership for the Liberal Party of Canada. She has won nine elections in the past 30 years and is the longest-serving woman from Newfoundland and Labrador, in both provincial and federal politics.

JUST AROUND THE CORNER

Just Around the Corner is the story of Member of Parliament for Labrador, Yvonne Rumbolt-Jones, a  woman from a northern community who broke free of her geographic and political isolation to embrace opportunity. 

An intimate memoir from the longest-serving ... female politician in Newfoundland and Labrador, Just Around the Corner uncovers Rumbolt-Jones’s strength as a survivor as well as her determination and courage through both her private life and her political life. She reveals her early years of dealing with child sexual abuse and experiences with family alcoholism, and her challenges as an adult confronting personal grief and loss, the sexism, public scrutiny, and challenges of party politics, as well as being diagnosed with cancer—twice. Through it all, the thread of Rumbolt-Jones’s love for Labrador and its people, and her hope and joy in working for the future of both shines through. She writes with confidence and candour about overcoming adversity and marginality to be elected to both the provincial House of Assembly and the national Parliament, where she has been a strong leader and voice for women, Indigenous peoples, and Canada’s North. Her story is that of a woman who refused to let the scars of the past define her, but rather used them to help her grow and understand that while we may not control what harms us, we can control how we move forward.

LISA MOORE

Lisa Moore is the author of the bestselling novels Alligator, February, and Caught; the short story collections Open and Something for Everyone; and the young adult novel, Flannery. She has won the Commonwealth Fiction Prize, CBC’s Canada Reads, and the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award and received nominations for the Man Booker Prize, the Giller Prize, and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Moore’s third novel, Caught, was adapted into a CBC television series. She lives in St. John’s. 

INVISIBLE PRISONS

Riveting nonfiction from multi-award-winning author Lisa Moore, based on the shocking true story of a teenaged boy who endured abuse and solitary confinement at a reform school in Newfoundland, but survived through grit and redemptive love.

Invisible Prisons is an extraordinary, empathetic collaboration between the magnificent writer Lisa Moore, best-known for her award-winning fiction, and a man named Jack Whalen, who as a child was held for four years at a reform school for boys in St John’s, where he suffered jaw-dropping abuses and deprivations. Despite the odds stacked against him, he found love on the other side, and managed to turn his life around as a husband and father. His daughter, Brittany, vowed at a young age to become a lawyer so that she could seek justice for him. Today, that is exactly what she is doing—and Jack's case is part of a lawsuit currently before the courts.

The story has parallels with Unholy Orders by Michael Harris about the Mount Cashel orphanage, and with the many horrific stories about residential schools—all of which expose a paternalistic state causing harm and a larger society looking away. Yet two powerful qualities set this story apart. As much as it is about an abusive system preying on children, it is also a tender tale of love between Jack and his wife Glennis, who saw the good man inside a damaged person and believed in him. And it is written in a novelistic way by the great Lisa Moore, who makes vividly real every moment and character in these pages.

KARL WELLS

Karl Wells has been a broadcaster in Newfoundland and Labrador media since he first spoke into a live microphone on VOWR at age 16. His professional career began in 1974 at the CBC, where for 32 years he perfected his skills in hosting, performing, newscasting, and interviewing. He appeared on multiple radio and TV programs including the flagship TV news program, Here and Now, during which his dynamic on-location weather and community broadcasts made him a much-loved personality throughout the province. Since leaving the CBC Karl has pursued writing with a 14-year stint as a weekly Telegram restaurant and food columnist, for which he received the Canadian Culinary Federation Sandy Sanderson Award.

OPENLY KARL

Openly Karl is a frank and generous memoir by one of Newfoundland and Labrador’s most well-known media figures.

Dive into the private and public life of Karl Wells, as told in his own words. From his birth in Buchans and early life in St. John’s, to his rise in media and a 32-year career with Here and Now at the CBC, Openly Karl is a rare opportunity to bring the face and voice you know from your television back into focus. While he will forever be known as “the weatherman,” Openly Karl explores the expanse of Karl Wells’s career and the nuances of his personal life, including coming to terms with being gay during a less tolerant period of Newfoundland and Labrador’s history and throughout the subsequent decades of social change. At times fascinating and funny, at others harrowing and heartbreaking, Karl’s story will keep readers tuned in.  

JULY 6 - Sunday morning PANEL 11:00 am - The Gripping Hitch: Firm Lines to the Past

DEBBIE MCGEE

Debbie McGee made her first film in Vancouver in 1983, and her last film in St. John’s in 2013. In between those markers, she worked as a writer and director of short dramas and NFB documentaries before joining the Media Unit at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador as Producer/Director. She has been an active volunteer with arts organizations throughout her career, serving on many boards, juries, and councils. Debbie is a mother and a grandmother. She lives in St. John’s, Newfoundland, with her adorable puppy Cammie.

CAUTIOUSLY PESSIMISTIC

An intimate and enlightening no-holds-barred memoir that uncovers the many unexpected details of dying, Cautiously Pessimistic is one woman’s personal account of her husband’s death and what it means to die in the public eye.

Cautiously Pessimistic is both deeply moving and funny as McGee tells the story of her husband’s diagnosis of brain cancer and the eight months leading up to his death. Through social media posts, text exchanges, and emails, as well as journal excerpts and letters, McGee delves into the story of her and her husband’s tumultuous early relationship and his eventual death. McGee’s narrative plays out amongst the scintillating backdrop of the tightly-knit St. John’s arts community and its vibrant affairs. St. John’s is a great town to live in, but an even better town to die in—especially when dying is documented online.

MARJORIE DOYLE

Marjorie Doyle has published five books of non fiction.  Her columns and essays have appeared in Globe and Mail, Ottawa Citizen, National Post, Fiddlehead, Geist, Calgary Herald, Queen’s Quarterly. She has been awarded a National Magazine Award, two CBC Radio Awards for Programming Excellence and a Golden Sheaf nomination for the documentary Regarding Our Father.  A former Chair of The Writers’ Union of Canada, she’s been writer in residence at Haig Brown House on Vancouver Island.  Visit marjoriedoyle.ca

MARY FOLEY MARY DOYLE

Marjorie Doyle grew up in a life of privilege in St. John’s, Newfoundland’s capital city. Her father, a middle-aged prosperous businessman, married Mary Foley, a young woman who had escaped a childhood of poverty.

Mary Foley, Mary Doyle is Marjorie’s journey to uncover the layers of her mother’s life. It is not a straightforward story to tell—secrets, lies, omissions, and equivocations were the tools Mary relied on for protection.

Mary Foley was raised in the 1920s and 30s in a bleak mill town on the west coast of Newfoundland. The Foleys of Corner Brook were urban poor; Mary never mentioned an address, just the relentless pursuit by landlords—one of whom hauled the roof off their house to force them out.

With the help of her ambitious illiterate mother and a convent of nuns, Mary earned her secretarial diploma, her ticket to St. John’s. She married her boss, a wealthy widower 25 years her senior and the father of five boys. Gerald Doyle was the eponymous founder of the Doyle Bulletin and the Doyle Songbook. They had an 11-year idyll, including sailing around outport Newfoundland in their own yacht.

But Gerald’s sudden death in 1956 left 39-year-old Mary with eight children, a household staff, and a business to run. She was “game,” a word she loved. She toured Europe for three months with children and no itinerary and later drove around Morocco in an Austin Mini. At age 57 she was awarded a long yearned for university degree.

But a deep-rooted contrariness complicated every relationship. She fell out with maids, doctors, neighbours, siblings, and her best friend and faux lover, a priest. A fierce sense of how the world should be drove her battles. A smoldering disquiet that the world was not fair, born of early years when poor and vulnerable she couldn’t fight back, haunted her.

Marjorie Doyle stitches together her mother’s fascinating life story from family recollections, archival work, and personal papers found after Mary’s death. Mary remains at centre stage of the story, as Marjorie—challenger, admirer, detective, herself part of the narrative—tries to record a life and penetrate the shield of a proud and secretive woman.

MARGOT DULEY

Margot I. Duley received a B.A.(Hons) from Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador, an M.A. from Duke University, and a Ph.D. in British Imperial and South Asian history from the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. She is Professor Emerita of History and Women's Studies, Eastern Michigan University, and Dean Emerita, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Springfield. Her interests include the history of women's movements, especially India, the United States and Newfoundland, and international women's alliances. She is co-editor and chief contributor to the Cross-Cultural Study of Women, and author of Where Once Our Mothers Stood We Stand: Women's Suffrage in Newfoundland 1890-1925, studies of Armine Gosling, the Newfoundland suffrage leader, Nurse Mona Loder, who served in France throughout World War One, and women's work on the home front. An engaged scholar, she has written about her experiences as President of the Michigan Conference of the National Organization for Women during the American Equal Rights Amendment campaign. She currently serves on the board Persistence Theatre Company, chairing its project to raise a statue to Armine Gosling. Margaret Duley, the subject of this biography, was her aunt.

EXTRA-ORDINARY PASSAGES

Through the voices of vivid characters, witty and moving dialogue, and poetically drawn landscapes and seascapes, Margaret Duley created a Newfoundland stage upon which she explored existential and universal questions. Duley won international recognition with four novels, and though lauded by leading critics abroad, her appreciation at home was comparatively muted. In her native St. John’s, Duley’s strong female protagonists prompted speculation and gossip about her own life as a single, questioning woman.

Skillfully interwoven with historical events, including the devastating impact of the first World War, the women’s suffrage movement, the Depression, the loss of Newfoundland’s self-government, and Confederation with Canada, Extraordinary Passages explores the influence of these critical times on Duley’s life and writing. Within these pages, Margaret Duley is freed from flattened descriptions of her as a wealthy jeweller’s daughter, unearthing the origins of her lifelong search for a fairer society and her deep appreciation for her island home. Disillusioned with Christian institutions that had justified war and entrapped women, she sought new answers at home and abroad in her search for spirituality, feminism, and anti-militarism.

Margot I. Duley is an historian and Margaret’s niece. Reflecting on personal knowledge, novels, letters, and a wide array of other sources, Margot I. Duley draws a lively portrait of the brilliant, complex and indomitable woman regarded as a precursor to modern feminist writers.

Ochre House Resident Visual Artist