4-Week Course: $349 + HST | $299 + HST before September 26
Wednesdays, 6:30 p.m.–9 p.m. ATL over Zoom
October 7–October 28
Writing a TV pilot requires more than just a great concept—although that is also important. For a pilot to be successful, it needs to set up specific key elements across a five-act structure. And each act needs to work together to accomplish the overarching goal of laying the groundwork for an entire season one and beyond. In this workshop, we will look at the five-act structure and those essential storytelling elements. We will also participate in screenplay exercises that stretch your creative muscles for the screen and get you thinking about how you would develop your own television series idea.
Wanda Taylor is an award-winning author, journalist, filmmaker and college professor. She is a former CBC TV producer and the author of 14 books. Wanda writes books across children’s, YA and adult markets. In her film and television work she has written hundreds of hours of content and two of her books have been adapted for the screen. She currently holds the position of the Rogers Chair in Journalism at King’s College and is a faculty mentor in the MFA Writing and Publishing program. She also works as a script editor for television projects in development, including the most recent series, Things Like These for Bell Fibre TV. As a journalist, Wanda holds bylines in numerous publications, including the Globe and Mail and Atlantic Books Today and her essays have been anthologized internationally. Her middle grade book, The Grover School Pledge, was the 2024 winner of the Northern Lights Book Award that recognizes literary excellence in children’s writing. Wanda’s next three books for young readers will be released in fall 2026 with Beech St Books and early 2028 with Kids Can Press. Wanda’s many awards for her body of work include the Women of Excellence Award for Arts and Culture.
Rob Csernyik is an award-winning business and investigative journalist, a 2022 Michener-Deacon fellow and the author of A Losing Hand (Sutherland House). His bylines have appeared at Atlantic Business Magazine, Barron’s Penta, Corporate Knights, Pivot, Report on Business Magazine and Wired among others. He has also been a contributing opinion columnist for the Globe and Mail’s business section. Rob’s business journalism has been awarded prizes by several regional and national competitions including the Atlantic Journalism Awards, Digital Publishing Awards and the National Magazine Awards: B2B. He has an MFA in creative nonfiction from King’s and recently lived abroad for 2.5 years as a digital nomad.
Tiffany Morris is an L’nu’skw (Mi’kmaw) writer from Nova Scotia. She is the author of the horror novella Carnalis (2026), as well as the Ignyte, Indigenous Voices, Shirley Jackson and Aurora award-nominated horror novella Green Fuse Burning, which won the 2024 Indie Ink Award for Indigenous Representation. Her work has appeared in the anthology Never Whistle at Night, as well as in Nightmare Magazine, Uncanny Magazinen and Apex Magazine, among others. She is a Director-at-Large for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, an MFA Mentor (Fiction) at King’s and one of the founding directors of The Trident Conference for Speculative Fiction.
Cooper Lee Bombardier is a queer, trans writer and visual artist based in Halifax/Kj’ipuktuk, Mi’kma’ki. 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 19 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 creative writing in the MFA in Creative Nonfiction program at King’s and at Dalhousie University.
Adrienne Gruber is an award-winning author of three books of poetry, including Q & A, Buoyancy Control and This is the Nightmare, and the creative non-fiction collection, Monsters, Martyrs and Marionettes: Essays on Motherhood. She won the 2015 Antigonish Review’s Great Blue Heron poetry contest, SubTerrain’s 2017 Lush Triumphant poetry contest, placed third in Event’s 2020 creative non-fiction contest and was the winner of SubTerrain’s 2023 creative non-fiction contest. Both her poetry and non-fiction have been longlisted for the CBC Books awards. She teaches and mentors in the University of King’s College MFA program and is a high school teacher at West Vancouver Secondary. Adrienne lives with her partner and their three daughters on Nex̱wlélex̱m (Bowen Island), B.C., the traditional territory of the Coast Salish peoples.
Trina Chapman’s essays have appeared in The Write Launch, Cool Beans Lit & Half and One. She won Honourable Mentions in the 2023 Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition and the 2025 Dreamer’s Creative Flash Nonfiction Competition. Trina holds a double bachelor’s degree in English and International Development Studies from the University of Guelph and an MFA from King’s. She has more than nine years of teaching experience, founded two schools and has lived in three countries. Her latest project is a memoir, entitled The Aster Glass: Violence, Revelation and Hope. Trina spends her free time paddleboarding on local lakes and obsessing over fermenting the perfect bottle of tepache. She is a repeat adopter of rescue dogs and lives with her family in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Genevieve Scott (she/her) is a Canadian writer and writing teacher. Her most recent novel, The Damages, was published by Random House Canada in July 2023 and by Verve Books in the UK in 2024. Her first novel, Catch My Drift, came out in 2018 with Goose Lane Editions. Genevieve is currently editing her third novel, The Fortunate Ones, forthcoming in 2028 with Random House Canada. Genevieve holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia. She teaches at the King’s in the Fiction MFA program and at the Laguna College of Art + Design in California. You can learn more about Genevieve at