Tosh Taylor - The voices of New Brunswick writers are the heart of WordCraft, a podcast aimed at creating community through words. WordCraft is a creation of the Writers Federation of New Brunswick, a non-profit organization that helps New Brunswick writers to write, acquire skills, and showcase their talents to the world. The show is hosted and produced by Jenna Morton, with technical production by Tosh Taylor. The WFNB acknowledges that the land on which we live, work, and gather is the traditional unceded territory of the Woolastook and Mi'kmaq peoples. And we honor the spirit of our ancestors' treaties of peace and friendship. We acknowledge the support of the Canadian Council for the Arts.

Jenna Morton - Welcome to Word Craft. I'm your host, Jenna Morton. On this episode, we're focusing on the New Brunswick Writing Competition. We're going to meet two previous winners who are going to reflect on how their participation shaped their approach to writing, their confidence, and their sense of community. The New Brunswick Writing Competition began in 1985, and it's been held every year since, hosted by the Writers Federation of New Brunswick. Over the last four decades, thousands of dollars in cash prizes have been awarded, and numerous writers who've taken part have gone on to national and even international success in the writing world. The competition is open for submissions in eight categories, all for previously unpublished works by New Brunswick residents from January 1st to March 31st each year. The awards highlight novels, short stories, poems and poetry collections, books for young people, writing by youth, narrative nonfiction, and short film scripts. You can find all the details on the website, wfnb.ca/writing-competition. Coming up, we're going to hear from Teresa Wu, who won the 2024 Sherry Fitch Prize for Teen Writers. But first, my conversation with Thomas Chamberlain, author of Happenstance, that's publishing in the fall of 2025. He won honorable mention for the David Adams Richards Prize for Fiction in 2023, and then took second place in the category in 2024. I began our conversation by asking Thomas to share about his writing competition journey.

Thomas Chamberlain - My name is Thomas Chamberlain. I'm an aspiring writer, I guess. This is my first novel and my first go at writing, really. So, oh - writing like a novel, writing fiction. And I'm a school teacher, was a school teacher. I'm retired from the province of New Brunswick. And so that's sort of that. And this manuscript that we're going to talk about today in the process was written about 10 or 12 years ago. I wrote it then with when I was teaching school. From that point, it got some kind of positive, comments from staff members and just general people that read it. And so I didn't really have that kind of drive to publish it or to really to fix it up much. Actually, I was using a little bit of it to teach children how to write. So then it kind of sat around a couple of years ago, I guess about 2021, my current partner, Denise, I just met her at the time and she's a big, big reader and asked me about my reading habits. And I said, well, I don't read like you do, but you know, like a book a week or something. But I wrote one. So, she read it and was kind of impressed enough with it. We thought we should maybe enter it in the Writers’ Federation of Brunswick's annual book awards [NB Writing Competition for unpublished work]. So we took about six months and, you know, edited, fixed it up, corrected some spelling, kind of got it to where we thought it would be competition ready, although we had no idea what that really was, and sent it away. And so I mean, that was one thing that really helped the writing was we had a deadline to do that, like, to get it in. We set a goal of getting it into the competition. So it's like writing to a deadline in a way. So we got that in and this was in 2023. It won. It came back with Honorable Mention. So and I told When Denise and I have talked about that, of course, and I said, now you've opened up a pile of work because, we've got sort of a validation that we've got something here. So that was, a big thing about the contest was someone told you, like an impartial person said it was - there was something there. At that time, I was excited about Honorable Mention. I mean, there's no doubt about it. But I didn't really know what that really meant. So at that year, WordSpring was the Writers' Federation's annual get-together, was in Saint John, New Brunswick, which was convenient for me because I live in Quispam - Rothesay area. So I attended that. And that really kind of moved it forward because when I went there, I met, I mean, I met all kinds of authors. I met authors with, PhD authors. I met published authors. I met wannabe authors. I met amateur authors. I met authors that entered the contest, didn't enter the contest. I was, I didn't know there was, because I didn't know the quality of writing that was going on, and the authors that were in New Brunswick. So, and that I was, my work was, being mentioned along with theirs. So that was a big, a big moment in my mind and in my proceeding to write. And also at Wordspring, I mean, I just want to [attend] Wordspring. I didn't know anybody. and just sat down in the library and, at the beginning of it, ceremonies or whatever it was, I forget exactly at the time. And I sat next to two people randomly, John Hanson and Trent Pomeroy, who are two writers. And we were talking and I told them who I was and what I had done. And they were very interested. And sitting right there, the two of them asked, if they could read a piece of it. So, I had the manuscript with me and they read a little section of it. And, they were both very, they were impressed enough to say, this is a very nice piece of writing, the sections they read, and that I could write. So it was kind of like authors telling me I could write. And they, and John Hanson, he, said he would, if I wanted to, I mean, we talked for a while. He took like a chapter of it home with him. And because he lived right there in Saint John. And later, in a week later or two weeks later, we met uptown at a cafe somewhere, a bar. And he went through my work and really straightened some stuff out for me - and it's all because of WordSpring. If I never went, I wouldn't have met him. Also at Wordspring, I also joined a workshop, the Blue Pencil Cafe, I think it was called at the time. And that was run by Warren Redmond, Zev Bagel, I think is his author's name. Yeah. And he had, I submitted like a chapter of his work. And so he's your representative of Merlin Star Press, I think, or is involved with Merlin Star Press. And he helped me out a lot too. And from a very kind of condensed piece of writing, like a chapter, they show you your mistakes and your strengths. And it's true if you're doing it in the chapter, you're doing it all the way through the book. And I was. And good things and bad things. I mean, they're not just, this is bad, this is bad, this is bad. You know, this is strong, this is strong, this is weak, this can be better, you know, when you're doing this, you're doing that. And so that helped me.

Also, and then the biggest piece of advice I got, or maybe the most thoughtful piece of advice that I had to really think hard about, I guess, on my point of view was, and I think it was Trent Pomeroy that told me this, but it may not have been, but it was one of the three of them told me I needed a professional editor. And that's not a bad thing. Like that I was at a point in the writing that you're probably going to have, if you want to write to publish, if that's where you want to go with your thing, that's what you should do.

So that, I mean, I thought about that because now we're talking about money, like to do that. And so I thought about that for a while and I did. I found Lee Thompson from Galleon Press and he agreed to take it on. And I told him it had one Honourable Mention in the Writers Federation competition. Of course, he's very familiar with this. And so he said he'd take the whole manuscript. You know, he just didn't wouldn't take a piece because obviously it had structure. There had to be a story there. There had to be something there to work with. So that saved me $500 because he didn't have, he didn't do the, whatever you would call it, like the pre-read or the pre-evaluation. So, that was, a great thing. So, he took it on and he had it for, I don't know, however time they had it, I'm going to say six months or so, maybe shorter, maybe longer. It came back with, and I like this, I've told a lot of people, it came back with 1,500 punctuation, grammar, formatting, but just mistakes. They were just blatant mistakes and to be fixed up. And 150 creative suggestions. And now that was everything from “this verb’s not working right,” to “this dialogue sounds to Pollyanna, not original.” And the ending has to be redone. They suggested the ending be not redone in its content, but redone in its time frame. And they just wanted a different ending. So that was that. And I did it. Took me about three months to do all the edits they suggested and sent it back to him. And then he sent it back to me. And then he said to me, you should re-enter it in the contest. in the Bender Riders Federation contest. And he said this, “and it'll win.” And I said, how do you know it'll win? And he said, “oh, it'll win - if the judge can get past the trauma in the first, in the first paragraph, in the first chapters of it. But it's good enough to win.”

So, good. So, okay. So, well, I'm paying. I mean, I'm giving this advice. So I contacted the Writers Federation, Rhonda, and asked her if I could do that because it already had got Honourable Mention. And then she said, and, you know, yes, and she really wanted me to do it because part of the goals of the Federation is for you to get feedback from the federation, from the contest, make it better and resubmit it. So I did resubmit it, and it came second, the second year. So then I was confident enough that I had something that was submission ready. So then I started the submitting process. That's very difficult too, because every publisher wants something different. There's very little consistency when you go to do that. So I did that. I don't know how many I sent out. I'm going to say about a dozen to 15 of them.

Also too, I could back up a bit here. Like after that, I did attend WordSpring again. It was the month in that year. And I read there at open mic and accepted my award and met the authors again. And I got a request from Mr. Redmond, Warren and Merlin Press to submit the manuscript to them. So I did. So that was, you know, a direct result of the contest. I met some other people there, of course. So And another advice I got, and this was from the first WordSpring too, and this helped me out too quite a bit in my journey, is to join writers groups, to join a writers group. And I don't know if you knew there was a writers group. And to try to get a writers group that was at the level or process that I was at in my writing. So I did that, and I joined a writers’ group and one that was run by Amanda Evans from Partridge Island Publishing. And I joined that one and that's run out of the Write Cup Cafe, I guess. Now it is. So I did that and I also joined another in the writing community, Saint John Voices, and they read, they have open mics. once a month. So that gave me practice to read out loud. If I was going down this going to be published journey, you're going to have to read out loud to people. So that was a great thing. And I have done it four or five times. And I just read sections out of the book and learn to pace myself and, you know, get a little bit of critique on it, which is all positive. So from the submission process, though, I mean, it was, as every writer knows, it's rejection, rejection, rejection. But I did get like a couple of requests to submit the whole manuscript, which is a big step, you know, like, and this is all new to me too, which was a big step. But, and of course, when you do that, you get a little bit of feedback on why they are not taking it. So, I got some feedback on it, on that, you know, you agree with some of you don't. I was kind of, kind of given up on the idea in a way, because it is a lot of work submitting stuff. So then about a year after Galleon Press – Lee - contacted me through, through e-mail or something, I forget exactly how it was done and said he exact words like he really couldn't get that story out of his head. So they were interested in taking it on if I was. At that time, I still had it out to one of the publishers, which I forget which one it was, still had it. And I think maybe it was Breakwater. It doesn't matter who that was, but it was out to someone. And I said, well, I have to kind of wait, you know, because they…but it was rejected, which is okay. So he took it on and that's sort of how it developed. So now, I've worked with him and, when I signed a contract and when I signed a contract, I got advice from the Writers Federation again. I called up, I think it was Rhonda and told her this is where I'm going, but I don't really know what I'm looking at here or and they sent me some stuff and that helped me out. It's great. Like winning in the contest was important because in a way, not in a way, because it, because then I got into the community, the writing community. And I think really that's the Writers’ Federation of NB, that's what you have to do. You need, if you're writing to publish, If that's your goal, and there's all kinds of goals for writing, you need to try to find someone that's going to give you sincere advice and critiques of your writing. And they don't usually come from your best friend, your girlfriend, your partner. They come from third parties and writers that have read a lot of writing. That was the importance of what winning for me is it forced me in, well, didn't force me, but it made me go to or say to join that, to join the community. So that's what I did. And I've had great feedback from people and, you know, even the authors that I was competing against, because I've met them and some of them are established authors, they're very supportive. I'm just a guy in the basement that wrote a story. Like, I don't have a degree in English. I don't have a big background in writing. I'm just a person that had a goal to write it, to make up a story and write one. And I did it. They, the other writers, no matter what skill level or background they have, never seem to…They don't seem to be nobody was offended by that or, they were all very positive. I've never I've never received any kind of negative things from anybody in the writing community on trying to be successful because it is hard to get published. And I know that now, you know, like you go to a bookstore and look at all the books and say, holy Jesus, can't be that difficult. Well, it is! it is because it's so competitive, and there's just so much stuff out there. So that's sort of my story about my journey through the last three or four years.

Jenna Morton - I love the sense of both community and confidence that come out of the award journey, right? It's not even necessarily winning that makes the difference. It's participating in the event.

Thomas Chamberlain - Absolutely. Yes, participation. So it's your decision, mine, because if I never went to Wordspring, if I just earned an Honourable Mention and stayed in my basement, the story would not have advanced. It had to be seen by more, because the judge doesn't really tell you anything. They tell you about why they liked it and why it kind of like why one, but they don't tell you that part of it is pretty flat, like this has to be fixed. That should be corrected. This is, they basically talk about your strengths, like. what was good about it, which is good, but you need to know what is not so good about it or what has to be improved, I guess, as well.

Jenna Morton - What do you think are the next steps for you now that this novel is kind of, it's about to be launched, it's going to be out there in the world. What do you see as the next step in your writing journey after the hubbub that will come with the launch, obviously.

Thomas Chamberlain - Well, I'm going to try to enjoy that. for as long as I can. At this level of publishing and publish, a lot of the local publisher authors will tell you this, I have to learn how to market the book a bit. So that's sort of what I'm kind of concentrating on now. So, you know, I'm trying to figure out like, how am I going to try to, because, you know, the small publishers in New Brunswick, the regional publishers are, they are who they are. They're trying to do the best they can. And, I give full credit to Galleon Press for taking a risk on this thing. Because if you know anything about the manuscript, it's not a fluffy book. It's a very serious book about a very serious topic. So, yeah, so for me, it'll be trying to market the book. I have kind of another idea in my head. I don't think the next one will take 10 years. where to go: I've written a couple of short stories and kind of a sense of humor. I tried to dethrone Trent Pomeroy on his run of, and I know you know who he is on his run of short stories because he can write them and they're good, but I couldn't do it. And I was, I met him the other day and I told him that, was my goal. But anyway, that's it. And you know, in my journey of creativity, this is the biggest one for me, is to be able to, in literary fiction, to make something absolutely up - 50,000 words, create a character, the storyline. And I basically just hope to enjoy it for a while, maybe get started another one in the new year, and hopefully I can probably get it done in six to 8 months. The draft won't take me long. It's step one of almost step 50. or step 100. So, but it is maybe the most enjoyable first step was when you hit, done. So that's sort of it, I guess.

Jenna Morton - Fantastic. Well, we'll give you a little bit of a taste of your marketing journey. Tell us a little bit, give us, you know, the back cover blurb. What's the story about? What title should people be looking for on the shelves? And who do you think will enjoy reading it?

Thomas Chamberlain - Well, okay. The book, the title is Happenstance, and that's the title. So we've agreed on the title. The book is about a young girl. She's an incest survivor, and it follows her through her journey on the last planned 3 days of her life. So the book is a very serious, it's about a very serious topic. And she journeys through these three days with her two friends. And she has a list of things that she wants to accomplish. And things, because of the name of the book, Happenstance, things keep getting in the way of this plan, like school is canceled or postponed because of a storm. It moves forward. And although the protagonist in the book is only 15 or 16 years old, I think the book will resonate more with readers that are a little bit older. And most of the feedback I've got from writers, and from Lee and publishers is how is the depth, the strength of the protagonist, the character of how well she's developed, and how believable her journey is. So that's sort of what it, that's what it's about. There's no fluff in the book.

Jenna Morton - There's room for all kinds of things, and certainly writing that sparks conversations is certainly important to have out in the world, so.

Thomas Chamberlain - Yeah, yes. And Gallium Press, is that kind of publisher. They're on the edge of things and good for him because, and good for them. They, he will take topics and he advertises that as well. That's part of his business plan. He will take good writing. I mean, I mean, in my journey of getting it published, I mean, I mean, I've got feedback from publishers and they won't, the topic is too, you know, it's not, it's not their cup of tea. I hope it takes off. I hope it has its successes. I hope it gets read. I hope the critics, you know, they might enjoy it on just how I got into the mind of a 14-year-old kid.

Jenna Morton - Well, fantastic. Thank you so much for taking some time to share your writing journey with us.

Thomas Chamberlain - Good. It was a pleasure. Anytime.

Jenna Morton - Thank you, Thomas. Thomas Chamberlain is the author of Happenstance, which is being published in the fall of 2025 by Galleon. Next in our conversation about the New Brunswick Writing Competition, we're going to meet Teresa Wu. She won the 2024 Sherry Fitch Prize for Teen Writers. Welcome to WordCraft, Teresa.

Teresa Wu - Thank you. Thank you so much, Jenna.

Jenna Morton - I'm really excited to hear more about your writing journey, and I'd love if you'd start a little bit by telling us about the story that won you the award.

Teresa Wu - Okay, so I believe I wrote this story when I was in grade 11, and originally it was actually for an English class because my teacher wanted us to submit stories for writing competitions. And I was reading a lot of poetry at the time, so I was wondering how I could incorporate poetry into my writing, and I found it kind of silly if I just added a rhyming man in it, but it would be really awkward if, there's just some random guy in the story that started rhyming. So I kind of built the story around that idea instead of something that's like more profound as other people thought when I was talking to them. So I wanted to have somebody that's kind of like weird, odd, and just rhymes for no reason. So then I thought, okay, what if I made it a little bit darker, if I had like a darker twist to it? So then I kind of combined the theme of perfectionism with this idea of this weird rhyming man. And I kind of made him like a plastic surgeon or a taxidermist, like kind of in between the two we don't know. And that's kind of my idea is to just write in between the lines and let the reader themselves discover the story or interpret it in the way that they want to.

Jenna Morton - I love that. That's very ambitious and also very fun.

Teresa Wu - Yes, I really enjoy the writing process.

Jenna Morton - You did this as an assignment, but it wasn't something where, you know, you had a lot of leeway to decide how you were going to do this. do you find that you like that process of having a little bit of a prompt, or do you prefer just to be completely open?

Teresa Wu - Well, we wrote this for like a short story contest, so there was no specific prompt. But I really like it when it's like open for my own interpretation. Like as long as you give me some room for my interpretation and what I want to add to the story, I'm fine, like prompt or no prompt. Why I mentioned that it was a writing competition for English class is that I kind of wanted to thank my English teacher for bringing me the opportunity to join writing competitions and kind of discover that, oh, I could write competitively because before it was more of a niche hobby type of thing that I would do by myself and… As a young writer, I feel like there's a lot of a cringe factor to your writing. Like, oh, you write, and then you read your writing, and you're like, oh, that's kind of cringey. That's not so good. I should just keep this to myself. And when we were actually talking about the assignment, everybody was kind of criticizing their own writing in a way. And they're like, oh, mine is so bad. Like, I finished this in one day. I don't feel good about it. And it was almost like this culture that, oh, I should join them in critiquing my own writing. So I literally said, oh, yeah, I just wrote about some rhyming guy and kind of like underplayed the whole importance of writing. And looking back, I don't really like that because I feel like writing means a lot to me. And this competition really helped me discover that like you reading your writing is one thing, but when other people also enjoys your writing, it gives you a lot of validation that I wasn't expecting. And from there on, I kind of blossomed into more of an actual writer and feeling more confident and free to share my writing with the world. Yeah.

Jenna Morton - I love that. I think a lot of people will resonate with that idea of thinking what they've done isn't good enough or they should downplay how important it really is to them because other people are doing that. And if we all do that, then you just have a room full of people who are actually really excited and proud of their work maybe and aren't sharing it openly. So I'm so glad that you brought that up and you shared that part of it. Did you have the opportunity to share that kind of reflection with your classmates or, now that you're a little bit, a couple years removed from being in high school, how do you kind of share that with people around you now?

Teresa Wu - I guess I'm like a lot more proud of it now, especially as a science major now. Like my introduction would be like, oh yeah, like I'm in science, but I have a passion for writing. And that would be like one of the first things that I bring up. And that would be a conversation starter because A lot of the times people will be like, what are you doing in science if you feel like you're a lot more talented in writing? But I feel like those two are like not really opposites, like they're the same side, like different sides of the same coin to me. So I guess that's something that a lot of people don't understand, but it's… Both aspects of science and writing are equally important to me, and they complement each other in ways that many people don't realize. So I feel like now it's just I'm confident to say that, yeah, I like both. I don't have to pick one, and that's completely okay.

Jenna Morton - How are you making both of those things work in your life right now?

Teresa Wu - So I feel like writing is really free and self-expressive. And me, I feel like for most writers, we're kind of born to, we have something that we must spill. We have something that we want to bring to the world. And, you know, even other artists, whether you want to do that through song, poetry, short story, like whatsoever, there's just this feeling that you want to bring something out. And that's what differentiates like a writer and a non-writer, or maybe like everybody can be a writer. And I think that is like the writer aspect and the science aspect is like the curiosity to discover. So like writing is like what brings this thing, this emotion, those thoughts into words. And science is more like curiosity. It's like, how does this work? How can I do better? And they complement each other because science gives me like some ideas and writing can bring some of those curiosities into form, into life. And for example, literally yesterday I was in physics class, and we were reviewing the concept of like energy. And then the prof was like, energy is never destroyed. It's only transformed into another shape, into another form of energy. And I was like, wow, that's so poetic. And literally in my notes, it was like, add this to poetry thoughts or something. Like, they go together really well. And I feel like a lot of my writing, I add aspects of both.

Jenna Morton - That's fantastic. Are you finding time for writing within your university studies or are you keeping it more as your hobby outlet side of things?

Teresa Wu - I feel like writing for me personally has always been the outlet because it's like a work-life balance type of thing and writing is more life than work, thankfully, because I think writing is really enjoyable. So that's also why I don't have to deal with writer's block that much, because I just write whenever I feel the need to instead of like, oh, I have to get this done. I'm not really on any deadlines. And I feel like that's when my best work comes out is when I'm not feeling pressured to do so. yeah, that's kind of how I balance it.

Jenna Morton - Getting back to the idea of entering a competition, can you talk a little bit about the feeling of that? Because for some people that would be a very, very terrifying idea, especially as a teenager, that they were going to put their words out there for someone else to look at.

Teresa Wu - I think one thing that my first impression of the Sherry Fitch contest was that it was completely free. That really caught me off guard because I searched up a lot of writing competitions beforehand and a lot of them had like fees and with good reason, like people need to get paid. But the fact that people would like go out of their way to make the contest free and more accessible for teens to submit their writing, like that was something that really hit me. I was like, wow, people actually want to hear the words and stories of young writers. And I kind of went into the competition with this mindset that, whoever is judging this competition, they care. And that took a lot of the pressure off my shoulders. And I just kind of was able to enjoy more and think less about like, it's just a competition. Like, I just write a story and then I submit it to the competition. Like, the story is actually just for me. It's not for the competition. And whether the judge likes it or not, that's like their problem. Obviously, I was very happy that I won and that they loved my story. But I think it just helps to think that this competition is for you and not for the judges.

Jenna Morton - I love that. What else would you want, if there's a high schooler listening to this right now or a middle schooler, because the competition for this particular award, it's open from ages 13 to 18. So if there's someone in that age range listening or an adult who has someone in their life that age listening, what would you like them to know about the competition?

Teresa Wu - I would say that it's really, it's really nice that the little community of writers holds this like little after party for the winners where you get to go and you get to like read a little bit of your story on stage and it's just a super friendly environment. It's like my first time going to something that has like very centered on writing and meeting other people that were, that was like me that really loved writing because in high school, most people that I've met see writing as like a chore, as like homework from class. So it was really nice to meet other people who actually had like a strong passion for it. And also like the competition in general, like I said, it's very accessible, so you don't really have to worry about money, cost, or time, really. You just like put in as much effort as you want, submit whatever you want to, and then the rest is just like out of your hands. You just like relax and hear back or yeah, it's just, it's really chill. Like there's not a lot to it, not too much pressure. And that's what I like about it. And this and other competitions as well. Like there's a lot more available to you than you think if you just do a Google search or whatever. And this was like the competition that kind of opened my world to writing. So I'm super grateful for the Sheree Fitch contest because then after, I submitted my work to other places and then I got to go on trips and other poetry conferences across the country, which was really cool.

Jenna Morton - I was just going to ask, what are you working on? What have you worked on since then and what are you working on now that you might like to share about?

Teresa Wu - So after that, in grade 12, my grad year, I submitted a poem that I wrote to my mom to Poetry and Voice, which is also a Canadian poetry association. And I submitted it for Future Verse, which is kind of like this poetry summit that they, it's like an all expenses paid poetry summit. They send a bunch of teens who also wrote poetry across the country to somewhere in Canada, and you just enjoy, have like poetry activities, meet real poets, and you kind of just like stay there for a whole week and have fun, you know, just like bathe in the atmosphere of like poetry. It was so nice. It was like one of the best weeks of my life. So yeah, that I strongly recommend. You should totally submit your work to Poetry and Voice and Future Verse happens every year. Also for teens, I think from grade like high school teens. I'm not sure of the age exactly, but strongly recommend. It's a super great opportunity if you like poetry. And again, like meeting like-minded people, I still have contact with all of them. And we still have monthly meetings where we would Zoom call and talk about our own projects and give each other some inspiration on what to do next. And it's just really cool. It's a super cool group of people. And it's also bilingual. So both languages are welcome.

Jenna Morton - That's fantastic. Thank you so much for sharing what you got out of the competition and what you've been accomplishing since. Thank you so much. I'm really looking forward to reading more of your work in the future because I'm sure there will be more to come that you'll share with us all.

Teresa Wu - Thank you, Jenna.

Jenna Morton - Teresa Wu attended Bernice McNaughton High School in Moncton when she was awarded the 2024 Sherry Fitch Prize for Teen Writers. She's currently studying at McGill University. Thank you for listening to this episode of WordCraft, where we were focusing on previous winners of the New Brunswick Writing Competition held annually by the Federation of New Brunswick Writers. You can find details about the past winners, including our guests today, as well as information about the competition if you're feeling inspired to submit your own work. Again, submissions are open January 1st to March 31st each year. There are 8 categories for previously unpublished works by New Brunswick residents. You can find all the details on our website, wfnb.ca. Look for the writing competition link.

Tosh Taylor - WordCraft is a project by the non-profit Writers Federation of New Brunswick. The show is hosted and produced by Jenna Morton with technical production by Tash Taylor. We acknowledge the support of the Canadian Council for the Arts. The Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick acknowledges that the land on which we live, work and gather is the traditional unceded territory of the Woolastook and Mi'kmaq peoples. We honor the spirit of our ancestors' treaties of peace and friendship.