King’s Writing Workshops

Make your writing dreams a reality!

King’s offers six new online writing workshops

February and March 2025

Whether you’re working on a novel, a memoir, or journalistic piece or are just developing your writing skills, the King’s Writing Workshops can help you become the author you want to be. Our non-credit 4- and 8-week workshops are open to everyone, everywhere, whether you’re still at the idea phase or already have words down on the page!

Workshop Registration is now closed. Thank you for your interest!

Four-week workshops on Zoom

$349 + HST

Eight-week workshops on Zoom

$599 + HST

SPECIAL PRICING: Members of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and King’s students, faculty, staff, parents, and alumni get $50 off the price of each workshop!

King’s has a limited number of bursaries available for students requiring financial assistance. Bursary applications are now closed.

Thursdays, beginning March 6 for 4 weeks
6:30–9 p.m. AST

As an aspiring author, you know that a strong author platform is crucial for attracting agents and publishers. But where do you start? In this workshop, I’ll guide you through the essential steps to develop an author platform strategy tailored to your unique story and skill sets.

Together, we’ll explore key components of platform building, including social media presence, author websites, newsletters, blogging and the significance of bylines. You’ll gain practical insights that empower you to create a platform that not only showcases your writing abilities but also entices potential agents and publishers.

Starting with a blank slate, you’ll leave with a solid author platform strategy that makes you feel comfortable, confident and capable as you navigate your book publishing journey

Brittany Foster is a professional freelance writer, editor and content marketer living in Nova Scotia, Canada with over a decade of experience. She’s worked with international software companies, authors and organizations like World Wildlife Fund Canada and The Canadian Women’s Foundation to develop platforms, build interest and grow engagement.

She also holds an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from the University of King’s College and a Publishing Certificate from Toronto Metropolitan University. You can find her writing and editing bylines in a wide variety of publications, including a bestselling Canadian historical fiction trilogy, a horror anthology, the Nature Conservancy of Canada, Jane Friedman and the Creative Nonfiction Collective.

Tuesdays, beginning February 4 (8 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST

In this course we will learn to write and revise short fiction and to provide meaningful, productive and respectful feedback for our peers. Engaging with readings from fiction innovators (George Saunders; Sarah Shun-lien Bynum; Jamaica Kincaid) and craft experts (Matthew Salesses; Felicia Rose Chavez; Ursula K. Le Guin), students will bolster their writing toolboxes through discussion, experimental in-class forays and a practice of peer critique that will make them stronger readers, colleagues and proleptic self-editors. Welcome to the fiction laboratory!

David Huebert’s writing has won the CBC Short Story Prize, appeared several times in Best Canadian Stories, and was a finalist for the 2020 Journey Prize. Huebert’s first short story collection, Peninsula Sinking, won a Dartmouth Book Award and was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Chemical Valley won the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and the ReLit Award. David teaches in the fiction MFA program at the University of King’s College in Kjipuktuk (Halifax), where he lives with his partner and two children. His debut novel, Oil People, was published in 2024 and has been called a “lyrical,” “elegant,” and “wildly hallucinatory.”  

Tuesdays, beginning February 4 (8 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST

For those of us of trans, queer, two-spirit, or LGBTQ experience, we know what it is like to have our stories marginalized, fetishized, or ignored; or else lumped together by dominant culture in totalizing ways which fail to account for the unique and singular experiences that compose our lives and purviews. In this creative writing workshop, we will focus on digging down into the depths, finding the stories, images, moments, tones, metaphors and words that give shape to what we know and have lived through. Prepare to cramp up your writing hand, because we will generate a lot of ideas here. We’ll tease out a moment of personal significance and unfold it into a short piece for workshop that may serve as a springboard for development into a longer work of creative nonfiction.

Geared toward writers of all levels from LGBTQI2S communities (and allies) who want to explore ways of rendering marginalized experiences into razor-sharp creative writing, this eight-week creative writing workshop will provide you with ample opportunity to generate new writing wrung from the hard-won knowledges of your own life.

Cooper Lee Bombardier is a queer, trans American writer and visual artist living in Canada. He is the author of the memoir-in-essays Pass With Care, a finalist for the 2021 Firecracker Award in Nonfiction. His writing appears in The Kenyon Review, The Malahat Review, Ninth Letter, CutBank, Nailed Magazine, Longreads, Narratively, BOMB and The Rumpus; and in 18 anthologies, including the Lambda Literary Award-winning anthology, The Remedy–Essays on Queer Health Issues and the Lambda-nominated anthology, Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Speculative Fiction From Transgender Writers, which won a 2018 American Library Association Stonewall Book Award. He is a two-time Lambda Literary Fellow and has received fellowships and support from the Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, the Access Copyright Foundation, RADAR Labs, Regional Arts and Culture Council, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and the Port Bickerton Lighthouse Residency. He teaches in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at University of King’s College and in the Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies department at Saint Mary’s University.

CANCELLED – Wednesdays beginning February 5 (8 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST

Why does fiction matter? Why, as a species, do we huddle close to breathe stories at one another in the dark? How does fiction come to life, and why do some stories linger in our memory, in the very bones of us? This introductory workshop for emerging writers will explore the core building blocks of great fiction and seek to answer—insofar as there can be an answer—what makes fiction tick.

We will read and discuss stories that range from the mid-20th century to modern works by masters and madpersons who have guided the form’s development, and by those who yet challenge its conventions. In-class and online assignments will develop your appreciation and understanding of literary style and rigour and foster, hopefully, a stronger, more confident capacity for critical reading. In addition, we’ll relentlessly cover editing and revising techniques, particularly with attention to sentences—because it may very well be the case that sentences are all that matter.

Additionally, the course aims to foster community among the attendees, to bring together writers of similar skill and drive, and to encourage the kind of creative energy that crackles between new practitioners.

D.W. Wilson is the author of Once You Break a Knuckle, a collection of short stories, and Ballistics, a novel. His fiction and essays have appeared in lit mags across the globe, and in 2011 he won the BBC National Short Story Award for “The Dead Roads.” Since then he has been shortlisted for numerous fiction prizes, and has won the CBC Canada Writes short story prize and the Manchester Fiction Prize. He studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and the University of East Anglia, and is currently at work on a novel, a short story collection and a video game.  

Wednesdays, beginning February 5 (8 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST

They say everyone has a book in them, but not everyone knows where to begin. Join award-winning author Kelly S. Thompson for this 8-week course that will teach the tools and skills for memoir writing in a supportive, well-structured environment. Using prompts, brainstorming and more, this intro course will give you a basis of knowledge to tell your own story with captivating language, creative structure and powerful descriptions.

Dr. Kelly S. Thompson is a writer, educator and academic, as well as a retired logistics officer within the Canadian Armed Forces. She has an MFA and a PhD in Creative Writing, with research centered on representations of grief and trauma, as well as narrative therapy process. She is now a mentor at the University of King’s MFA in Creative Nonfiction.

Her essays, poems and fiction have appeared in literary magazines, trade publications and anthologies, as well as publications such as Chatelaine, Maclean’s, The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star and more. Her memoir, Girls Need Not Apply: Field Notes from the Forces, was an instant Globe and Mail bestseller and was listed as one of the top 100 Books of 2019 by the Globe and Mail. Her second memoir, Still, I Cannot Save You: A memoir of sisterhood, love and letting go, released in 2023 and was also an instant bestseller and was shortlisted for the Nova Scotia Book Award for Nonfiction and the Atlantic Book Prizes Reader’s Choice Award. 

Thursdays, beginning February 6 (4 weeks)
6:30–9 p.m. AST

Some of the most compelling book ideas are inspired by science. Think Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks or Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point. You don’t have to be a scientist to write creatively about science. Are you grappling with how to translate data into a compelling story? Do you have a story idea that requires you to read and decipher scientific studies?

In this four-week workshop, we will:

• Explore the genre by literary style, technique and purpose (razor-sharp focus like Gladwell’s Blink versus the intensive study of Siddhartha Mukherjee’s Emperor of All Maladies)
• Identify unique book ideas in the popular science space to engage with your target audience
• Hone your research skills and identify the most critical studies for your topic
• Build a literary narrative from scientific findings
• Package your story in your own unique way

We will workshop your ideas together, getting you started on your next book project, short piece or article. In this workshop, you will explore the science behind the story that you want to tell and discover how to bring it to your readers in an exciting and accessible way.  

Karen van Kampen is an author, journalist and communications professional who specializes in health and science. She is currently writing a book on the science of dreaming, exploring the connection between our waking and dreaming lives and how we can use our dreams to improve our well-being. She is the author of The Golden Cell: The Quest for the Next Great Medical Breakthrough. Her journalism credits include The Globe and Mail, National Post and Flare magazine. She was previously managing editor of National Post Business magazine, senior writer at Calgary Herald, features editor at Chatelaine and copy chief at FASHION magazine. As principal of Daring + Kind Management Consulting, she works with organizations to create engaging brand stories.