FRIDAY JULY 3rd - @ 7:30 PM

ELIZABETH MURPHY

Born and raised in Newfoundland, Elizabeth spent her professional career in a variety of educational roles as teacher, administrator, and professor. She completed her Ph.D. in Quebec,won awards for her research and writing while working at Memorial University, and served as a visiting professor in Bangkok. Nova Scotia is where she now lazes, reads, writes, and dreams of summer back home on the island and winter far away in Thailand.The Weather Divineris her second novel.

The Weather Diviner

Set in a tragic, transformative year in an extraordinary place with larger-than-life characters, The Weather Diviner is a story of self-discovery—not just for one young woman, but for Newfoundland itself.

It’s 1942. With polished boots and bulging wallets, the Americans have come to defend a highly strategic location—Newfoundland: the Allies’ new transatlantic transportation hub. Like thousands of others chasing new opportunities, Violet Morgen abandons her remote outport home and heads to St. John's. An amateur forecaster with a powerful sixth sense for the island’s tempestuous winds and weather, Violet is determined to help the Americans fight the enemy. But determination, it turns out, is not enough.

Carefully-researched and -crafted, entertaining, and informative, The Weather Diviner is a heart-felt tale in which friends make a difference, weather makes for interesting conversation, and opportunity comes to those who dare to dream.

 

MARY WALSH

Mary created and starred in This Hour Has 22 Minutes, CBC’s comedic take on current affairs. The series earned her many of her numerous Gemini Awards (now called the Canadian Screen Awards) and showcased her dynamic range of characters, including the flagrantly outspoken Marg Delahunty. Walsh wrote, produced, and starred in the award-winning series Hatching, Matching and Dispatching, which returned to CBC in 2017 as a feature length presentation called A Christmas Fury, with Walsh and the original cast reprising their roles. She has also been nominated for two Genies for her performances in feature films Crackie and New Waterford Girl. In 2017 she published her debut novel, the Canadian bestseller Crying for the Moon. Among her many awards and doctorates, Mary is the recipient of the Order of Canada, the Governor General’s Lifetime Achievement Award in the Performing Arts, and the CSA’s Earle Grey Award for lifetime achievement in television acting.

Brassy Bit of Aging Crumpet

In this disarmingly vulnerable and wickedly hilarious collection of essays, Mary Walsh chronicles her colourful—sometimes difficult, never boring—life, coming to the hopeful conclusion that growing old means finally finding (and loving) yourself

In this sharply observed and wryly funny collection of essays on identity, family, and belonging, Mary Walsh takes readers on a rollicking—and sometimes difficult, but never boring—journey through her life. Her subjects range from the heartbreak of growing up next door to her family, to Newfoundland’s vibrant and not altogether happy entry into the Canadian confederation, to the behind-the-scenes of her wildly popular CBC shows, including This Hour Has 22 Minutes, to her complicated relationship with her complicated mother, and to her struggles with alcohol, self-doubt, and what it means to connect with those around her.

The result is a collection of essays that are deftly comical, vividly rendered, heartachingly vulnerable and, above all, hopeful. In the end, Mary learns the trials and hurdles (some self-inflicted) that she endured in her younger years only make the process of aging all the sweeter. The message she now has is a powerful one: her older years are her best ones yet, because she’s finally learned to accept who she is. 

 

SATURDAY JULY 4TH - Panel @ 11:00 AM

DEIRDRE HALBOT

Diedre is a writer, essayist, and horror enthusiast from Newfoundland and Labrador. She was raised in the Bay of Islands, where her family is from, and now resides in Bay St. GeorgeSouth. The people and places of her youth have been a constant source of inspiration and motivation for her work and she has a passion for sharing stories of her French-Indigenous heritage. She works in Environmental Science, and her hobbies include bullying politicians, birdwatching, and trying to seem cool (and failing) around her teenage daughter. This is her first book.

Little Spoons

Amidst the unique landscape and history of French Newfoundland, rumours of the supernatural and a sudden death unearth family secrets.

After the unexpected death of her grandmother, Mary inherits her property and returns home to western Newfoundland with her young son. When she uncovers curious items that may be clues about her grandmother’s fate, Mary begins to unravel the secrets surrounding a string of suspicious disappearances and deaths in the community—deaths that always seem to involve women. Demons from the past catch up with Mary as she learns of her grandmother’s isolation from her peers. Discovering stories of witchcraft and rumours of the supernatural, she attempts to piece together her family’s story—a story that may have led to her grandmother’s death. When someone else goes missing, Mary must act quickly to untangle the strings of fact and fiction, or risk drowning in the same rumours that haunted those before her.  

 

RAY CRITCH

By day, Ray is a lawyer who has appeared at every level of court in Newfoundland and Labrador and at the Supreme Court of Canada. By night, he is a happily married father of two who, once in a while, manages to carve off some spare time to pop down to a local sports bar and do some writing. In what now feels like a past life, but was actually 2010, he obtained aPHD in philosophy from the University of Edinburgh. Before being called to the bar in 2016, he taught at universities in Edinburgh, Vienna, and St. John’s.

The Beltane Massacre

Simultaneously a high-stakes mystery and an in-depth exploration of grief and loss, The Beltane Massacre is reminiscent of a classic spy novel with a modern twist – Rowan McRae is a different kind of hero for a different age who must learn how to move on after experiencing unthinkable tragedy.

Rowan McRae, a former Canadian Forces intelligence officer, lives in the UK with a beautiful wife and healthy baby. He’s about to finish his PhD and then take up a teaching post in London. But then the unthinkable happens at the Edinburgh Beltane Festival; his wife and son, along with dozens of other people, are killed when a bomb is tossed into the bonfire. One year later, Rowan is enlisted by MI5 to help jumpstart the foundering investigation into the bombing. In so doing, he uncovers a conspiracy touching on the highest levels of society—a conspiracy protecting the bomber.

 

MACKENZIE NOLAN

Mackenzie was born and raised in Newfoundland. Working professionally as a social worker for several years, she found herself better suited to writing interpersonal dynamics, rather than solving them. She lives in St. John’s, NL. Veal is her debut novel.

Veal

Delores “Lawrence” Franklin is a failed capitalist and a runaway headcase. Following a corporate meltdown, she decides to start fresh in Mistaken Point, a small town known for two things — Mistaken Point University, where she and her best friend, Anastasia Lanes, are now enrolled, and the grisly murders of countless young women.

At her new part-time arcade job, Lawrence meets Francesca “Franky” Delores — gritty, off-putting, and chronically serious, as opposite to Lawrence as her name would suggest. Soon, Lawrence discovers Franky is convinced there is a monster on the loose, a patchwork creature born of hatred and responsible for the supposedly solved string of violence haunting the town.

Against the advice of Franky’s closest friend, Pippa, Lawrence, and Stasia join Franky in a sticky, summertime search for a yellow-eyed monster between classes, shifts at the arcade, and eating popsicles by the pool. Motivated mostly by her unquenchable attraction to Franky, Lawrence allows herself to be pulled in strange directions, trying to appease Franky’s mania. Through the trials of hunting a monster only some of them believe in, Pippa, Lawrence, Stasia, and Franky discover truths about womanhood, relationships, and the reliability of urban legends.

 

BRIDGET CANNING

Bridget’s debut novel, The Greatest Hits of Wanda Jaynes, was selected as a finalist for the BMO Winterset Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, the NL FictionAward, and was longlisted for the Dublin International Literary Award. Her second novel, Some People’s Children, was a finalist for the BMO Winterset Award and the Thomas Raddall Award. In the same year, she received the CBC Emerging Artist Award with ArtsNL. Her third book and first short story collection, No One Knows About Us, was published by Breakwater Books in the fall of 2022. It was named a finalist for the 2023 Alistair MacLeod Award and won the NL BookAward for Fiction. Bridget holds a Masters of Arts in Creative Writing from Memorial University and a Masters of Literacy Education from Mount Saint Vincent University. She grew up in Highlands, NL, and currently lives in St. John’s

Taking Down Names

In a darkly humorous and thrilling exploration of vengeance and grief, a journalist must unravel a twisting story of vigilante justice amidst her own personal tragedy.

In modern-day Newfoundland and Labrador, journalist Jacky Careen struggles to find meaning in her work and life after her sister Mia becomes a victim of sexual cyberviolence and later, takes her own life.

 As Jacky continues to report local news, dark karmic parallels begin to emerge: a man known for trolling victims of car accidents drives off a cliff, a homophobe dies in a closet, an incel who refers to women as trash falls into an illegal dumping zone. At first, Jacky believes only she notices these coincidences, but as the deaths continue, Jacky must confront the story unraveling before her.

 

SATURDAY JULY 4TH @ 7:30 PM

SHARON BALA

Sharon’s bestselling debut novel, The Boat People, won the 2020 Newfoundland & Labrador Book Award and the 2019 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction. It was a finalist for Canada Reads 2018, the 2018 Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and was longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award and the Aspen Words Literary Prize. Her short fiction has appeared in Hazlitt, Grain, PRISM international, The Dalhousie Review, The New Quarterly, Maisonneuve, The Newfoundland Quarterly Online, Room, and Riddle Fence.

She lives on the island of Ktaqmkuk (Newfoundland), which is the unceded, traditional territory of the Beothuk and the Mi'kmaq, with her husband, the mathemagician Tom Baird.

Good Guys

From the bestselling author of The Boat People comes a page-turning moral drama about money, the dark side of philanthropy, and what happens when you try to change the world for all the wrong reasons.
"The easiest choices are the ones you make for other people."
Claire Talbot is the publicist at Children of the World, an international aid charity. Morally burnt out after decades working in reputation management, Claire is relieved to finally use her PR skills for good. Too bad the organization is on the verge of bankruptcy. In a last-ditch effort to keep them afloat, Claire arranges for an A-list actress to volunteer at one of their overseas orphanages. When the actress decides to adopt a baby and promises a massive donation, it seems as if Claire has single-handedly saved the day. But after a journalist digs into their operations and reveals a shocking crime, Claire and her colleagues must reckon with their complicity and all the ways their work abroad has harmed the very people they set out to save. Moving between Children of the World’s headquarters in Toronto and their compound in Central America, Good Guys charts the charity’s rise and fall. Scathing yet compassionate, the novel is a thought-provoking exploration of power, philanthropy, and the lengths we go to for redemption. Emotionally engrossing, tightly paced, and sharply observed, it ultimately asks: Is it possible to do good in an imperfect world?

 

ANGELA ANTLE

Angela is a writer, artist, and documentary maker based in St. John’s, Newfoundland. Antle’s writing has appeared in RiddleFence, Newfoundland Quarterly, and cbc.ca. She wrote and directed Gander’s Ripple Effect: How a Small Town’s Kindness Opened on Broadway, and wrote the feature-length Irish-Norwegian-Canadian documentary Atlantic: What Lies Beneath. Narrated by Brendan Gleeson, it was the winner of best documentary awards at the Dublin, Wexford, Nickel, and Chagrin Film Festivals. As a journalist, Angela has rowed a dory through the Narrows, covered the subculture of Florida’s Spring Break, taken bumpy komatik rides on the coast of Labrador, hitchhiked from France to Newfoundland on a fishing boat, interviewed a Prime Minister on Broadway, and recorded Ron Hynes singing “Sonny’s Dream” in Ireland. She is an interdisciplinary PhD candidate at Memorial University, a member of Norway’s Empowered Futures Energy School, and was recently named the 2025 Rachel Carson Writer in Residence at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

The Saltbox Olive

Through the as-yet-untold story of Newfoundland soldiers in Italy during the Second World War, The Saltbox Olive is an evocative tale of the complex interactions between past and present, told through one woman’s search for the truth of her family’s mysterious past.

Caroline Fisher sets out to solve the mystery of why her grandfather burned his brother Arch’s wartime letters. The Saltbox Olive follows the wartime route of Arch, Tombstone, Slade, and Garl, members of the 166th British Army (Newfoundland) Artillery Regiment. After surviving the battles of the Sangro and Cassino, they are all but forgotten by British HQ in the mountains between Florence and Bologna, where war loses all semblance of logic, where their loyalties are tested, and where they encounter acts of brutality, revenge, and loneliness. Weaving their stories with those of Caroline and Min Fisher, war photographer Barbara Kerr, and partisan Lucia Capponi and her son Cosimo, The Saltbox Olive explores the role of individual responsibility in wartime, how photography influences our understanding of truth, and how sins committed in times of duress as well as declarations of love can ripple outward for generations. The Saltbox Olive is about the connections of the past to the present and the conflict between the simple truths we desperately crave, and life’s complex realities.

 

RHEA ROLLMAN

Rhea (she/her) is an award-winning journalist, writer, and audio producer based in St. John’s, NL. A founding editor of The Independent, her work has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, CBC, Xtra, Chatelaine, PopMatters, Riddle Fence, and Maclean’s, among others. Her academic writing has been published in journals including Journal of Gender Studies, Labour Studies Journal, Canadian Woman Studies, and Canadian Review of Sociology.

Her work has earned three Atlantic Journalism Awards, the Andrea Walker Memorial Prize for Feminist Health Journalism, and multiple Canadian Association of Journalists award nominations. Her book A Queer History of Newfoundland (2023) was longlisted for the Winterset Award and shortlisted for the Ed Roberts History Book Award. In 2024, she was shortlisted for the NL Provincial Human Rights Award.

Rhea serves on the boards of Trans Support NL, the National Community Radio Association, and the Global Alliance Against Traffic in Women, and on CUPE’s National Pink Triangle Committee. She is Station Manager at CHMR-FM and has a long history of labour organizing and queer and trans activism.

A Queer History of Newfoundland

“There have always been queers in Newfoundland and Labrador.” 

Through decades of repression – both intentional and unintentional – the powerful story of 20th century queer community-building and activism in this province has remained largely ignored. Until now. Journalist Rhea Rollmann, through extensive interviews, archival work and investigative reporting, brings that history to light.

Organized queer activism dates back to at least 1974 in this province, but queer presence and community stretches back much farther. Rollmann spent years scouring archives, newspapers and court records to chronicle that history. She draws on archival work as well as more than 120 first-hand interviews with activists and community members to document this history behind the history of the province. The book focuses on the fight for human rights protections, AIDS activism, the growth of the city's vibrant queer bar scene, lesbian struggles for space in the feminist movement, trans struggles for recognition and health care, and more. Just as same-sex intimacy emerged in spaces as varied as the fishing industry and campus dorms, queer liberation also took diverse forms in this province, from quiet living-room consciousness-raising groups to angry, in-your-face marches on homophobic bars. Newfoundland and Labrador has been tied into national and international queer liberation networks ever since the 1970s, but NL'ers also played a major role in shaping those national movements. This book explores all of these stories, and more. The story of the queer rights movement in this province is one of great pride and joy; one of hardship and struggle; and ultimately, one of triumph. Why? Because: There have always been – and always will be – queers in Newfoundland and Labrador.

 

SUNDAY JULY 5TH - Panel @ 10:30 AM

MICHELLE T. CLEMENS

Michelle’s first novel The Girls of Belvedere was published in May 2025. Her screenplay Success won at the Sydney, Australia’s International Science Fiction Film Festival, and at the Women’s over 50 Film Festival in the UK. Michelle is a co-creator/owner in PrinciPALs Productions.

Michelle has won Arts and Letters in Poetry and Dramatic Script. Showdown was part of the Year of the Arts Women’s Play Festival and selected by the Playwriter’s Guild of Canada for their Craft Bite International, 2023. Her three stage comedies were sold out hits at The Barbara Barrett Theatre.

Michelle's second novel is expected in the fall of 2026.

The Girls of Belvedere

The sudden death of Kitty Murphy’s mother sends Kitty and her younger sisters, Hannah and Ruth, to an orphanage in St. John’s. Their brother is allowed to stay home because “boys earn and girls cost.” The next seven years are a test of endurance as they cope with brutality from a cruel, self-righteous nun and the bullies who curry the Sister’s favour. Kitty tries her best to protect her younger sisters in this unpredictable environment.

The 1940s in Newfoundland offered very little to a woman. Life in a fishing outport meant unrelenting poverty and an exhausting cycle of pregnancy, childbirth, and child-rearing. Too many mothers died, and their children were turned over to the Sisters to raise in St. John’s. Mothers without husbands entered sudden and desperate relationships with men or fell into prostitution. Some women became nuns to escape motherhood with all its perils. They wanted a chance for peace and predictability. However, those young women discovered life in a cloister meant a different foot was on the back of your neck. All these lives intersected at the doors of Belvedere Orphanage.

 

DELORES MULLINGS

Delores is a nationally and internationally respected senior academic leader, scholar, and keynote speaker whose work examines equity, anti-racism, leadership, and institutional transformation. She most recently served as Vice-Provost (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion and Anti-Racism), where she established a university-wide EDI-AR office, led large-scale multi-campus consultations, and advanced policy, governance, and community partnerships across sectors.

A full professor and trained social worker, Dr. Mullings brings an intersectional racial justice-centered lens to leadership and organizational change. She is the co-editor of In Her Arms: Love and Legacy of Black Mothers and Daughters and is widely sought after for her candid, insightful keynote addresses on power, governance, race, gender, and institutional accountability. She is also a poet, with her forthcoming collection Black Girl in the Ring to be released in Spring 2026.

Black Girl in the Ring

Juxtaposing experiences of discrimination with love and resilience, this debut poetry collection is a critique of intimate and institutional violence and hostility, entwined with a celebration of beauty and fierceness.

What is the difference between institutional violence enacted by trusted individuals and intimate violence enacted by loved ones? This collection of free verse, haiku, and narrative poetry takes the reader by the hand and walks them through these parallel experiences from a personal perspective. In a study of relationships of power, these poems delve into the complex structures of feminism, nature, and discrimination. A balanced mixture of reflection, celebration, energy, and sadness unfolds within the pages; drawing on a contemporary style, the author creates the space to feel grief, loss, sorrow, and disappointment in equal measure with joy, contemplation, excitement, and elation.  

LEAHDAWN HELENA

Leahdawn Helena (she/they/nekm) was born and raised on the west coast of the island colonially known as Newfoundland. She is of mixed L’nu (Mi’kmaw) and French settler heritage, with family roots in the Bay St. George region of Newfoundland. She holds a BA in sociocultural studies and a BFA in Theatre from Memorial University of Newfoundland’s Grenfell Campus.Her film script Ruthless won the NL Arts and Letters award in 2020 in the senior dramatic script category. She lives in St. John's with her husband Chris, their dog Chevy, and their cat, Monty. This is her first published work.

Stolen Sisters

Stolen Sisters is a first-of-its-kind play that gives voice to the lives and legacies of three Beothuk women and girls whose names have survived in historical record.

These are stories that have been mis-told, misrepresented, and mythologized by colonial interference. By shifting the lens of history to reflect Indigenous perspective and experience, the women brought to life in Stolen Sisters set the record straight, telling their own stories with both humour and unflinching honestly. Based on the oral and written Indigenous histories of colonization locally and worldwide, the voices of Stolen Sisters shine a light on the global experience of Indigenous women and girls and, in particular, Newfoundland’s part in that legacy.

 

HEATHER BARRETT (Moderator)

Heather Barrett was born and raised in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador, where she still lives with her family. She holds a Bachelor of Music from Memorial University of Newfoundland and a Master of Arts in Journalism from Western University in London, Ontario.

Heather is a journalist and storyteller, and an international award winning radio documentary producer.  She is also a long-time producer and host with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, based in St. John’s. When she’s not telling stories, Heather is an avid knitter and an avid runner, but not at the same time.

The Mill Girls

Join Heather Barrett on an extraordinary journey as she uncovers the mystery of the Mill Girls. Using humour, drama, and heartwarming tales, their story illuminates the 1940’s exodus of young single women from the then country of Newfoundland to Cambridge, an industrial city in Ontario.

The Mill Girls invaded Canada like a tidal wave, transforming the demographics, culture and economics of an entire region, and launching a feminist offensive before the word itself existed. Who were they? Why did they leave Newfoundland? And why did their stories vanish? This new book reads like a whodunnit, with heaping doses of comedy and inspiration.