The following is a selection of stories written for previous Narrative Nonfiction Workshops. . .
This wasn’t supposed to be happening! This wasn’t part of the plan at all! She didn’t mind being in the background, being space filler. But this? No way. She couldn’t handle this. It was just too much. Her heart was racing as she looked into the camera...
(Written by Stephanie Cameron, January 2007)
Every journalist is looking for the big story. For some, it might be an interview with a person they’ve always admired or a profile on someone who holds great power. It may be the coverage of a momentous event or the story of a huge scandal. But for me, the big story is my little sister.
(Written by Tara McClair, January 2007)
It’s a Monday afternoon and the shades in the apartment are drawn. Outside, the late September sun is shining, but inside, sitting on the floor, Michael Bray shivers. The phone is in front of him and the fear is on him. He feels thin, stretched. A transparent creature of the nerve endings. But today, he’s quit feeling sorry for himself.
(Written by Ashlee Starratt, January 2007)
He's been an unskilled immigrant, a successful Halifax city treasurer and a person who likes to do what others can't. Now Bernard Smith is manager of Spring Garden Road's business association, where achieving the impossible comes with the territory... This story also appeared as the cover story in the December 21, 2006 issue of The Coast.
(Written by Jess McDiarmid, January 2007)
Sensations Cabaret opened in January, despite protests from Dartmouth residents who don't want a strip club in their backyard. But with the club facing a public hearing to get its liquor licence renewed, the real battle is just starting... This story was the cover story in the March 23, 2006 issue of The Coast and won an Atlantic Journalism Award as the best student story of 2005-06.
(Written by M eredith Dault, April 2006)
Fans of Trailer Park Boys know him as Jim Lahey, the perpetually sloshed park supervisor with the strange, somewhat closeted sexual relationship with his shirtless assistant Randy. But there is much more to the real man behind his brown aviator shades... much more. A version of this story appeared the Fall 2005 issue of Progress Halifax Magazine.
(Written by Carsten Knox, September 2005)
Dutch Robinson wants another drink. If he were more famous, more recognized, he wouldn’t have to keep trying to get the cute blonde server’s attention. Hell, if he were more, more something, he wouldn’t be at Monte’s Bar and Grill, a smoke-filled dive hidden in the parking lot behind Canal Family restaurant in Eastern Passage.
(Written by Emily Kimber, September 2005)
Last autumn a 16-year-old boy stole a car and, while being chased by police,
ran a red light and slammed into Theresa McEvoy’s car, killing the teacher assistant.
The boy’s mother tells the story behind the headlines. Published in The Coast, June 16, 2005.
(Written by Robin Gillingham, September 2005)
At 46, Devlin Kerry says he’s done everything. He’s been married and divorced, in jail and a popular, guitar-playing busker. But after being beaten nearly to death in October 2004, there’s one thing he’s not sure he can do — recover.
Winner of the Atlantic Journalism Awards "Emera Prize for Journalism Excellence" for the best piece of work produced by a King's Journalism student in 2004-05. Published in The Coast, August 11, 2005.
(Written by Derek Hill, September 2005)
Dalhousie University professor Don Weaver became a neurologist, a chemist, a drug designer, an entrepreneur... all in the interest of trying to understand the most mystifying structure in the universe: the human brain. Winner of the 2005 Nova Scotia Institute of Science "Prize for Scientific Writing."
(Written by Jennifer Paterson, September 2005)
For most people, the idea of losing $200 in 10 minutes would provide a fast and harsh lesson: don’t do things that can cost you $200 in 10 minutes. But I rationalized I could just as easily win it back tomorrow. Or maybe later today. The faster I got back to the casino, the sooner I got my money back.
(Written by Adam Richardson, September 2005)
Journalist, archivist, entrepreneur, typist and secretary, radio stringer, gas station attendant, and dish washer... Georges Dupuis does whatever he has to in order to keep a roof over himself and The Elephant
(Written by Sam Worthington, September 2005)
Kate Carmichael, the head of Halifax's downtown business organization, may be dying. But she's not dead yet. And she has no plans to go quietly.
(Written by Lynn Patterson, April 2003)
What's life on the streets for street kids really like? This narrative nonfiction account won the Imperial Oil Prize for Excellence at the 2003 Atlantic Journalism Awards.
(Written by Laura deCarufel, April 2003)
The impossible dream of inner-city housing
(Written by Wendy Sawatzky, April 2001)
Raymond Davis didn’t expect much. But he was running out of options. He picked up the phone, called the Halifax businessman who had ties in Shelburne. What could the guy do? Tell him to go to hell? Hang up on him? “You don’t know me,” Davis began, “and I don’t know you, and you’re going to think I’m stark raving crazy but I’m going to ask you anyway.” He laid out his crazy idea. “The phone went dead,” Davis remembers. He thought that was the end of it. But the man hadn’t hung up. He was thinking.
(Written by Chad Lucas, April 2001)
Swallowing depression
(Written by Jen Cleary, April 2001)
Robert Pictou-Branscombe has spent the past 10 years trying to find out who really killed his cousin, Anna Mae Pictou-Aquash. When he began his quest, the New Brunswick-born Mi'kmaq didn't know Anna Mae had been a heroine of the American Indian Movement. Or that her 1975 death was still a controversial mystery and officially unsolved. He discovered all of that by chance, and that chance set him off on an incredible odyssey across North America.
(Written by Bryan Phelan, April 2001)
On May 11, 2000 the Acadia Theatre shut its doors to the public after 53 years. The closing signaled the end of the movie theatre business in the small valley town of Wolfville. But more than that, it marked the end of one man's working relationship with small-town movie houses – a relationship that lasted over five decades.
(Written by Ann Shupe, April 2001)
Misadventures in movieland: a journalist's quest for a scoop on the set of The Shipping News
(Written by Sara Tate, April 2001)
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