If you’re an emerging Black writer in Nova Scotia working on a project but aren’t sure how to publish it, or want to talk to writers who have been there and get advice on what comes next, then the Ink Collective is likely for you.
With bi-monthly sessions from spring until fall, the program aims to uplift Black writers through workshops that will build community, develop writing techniques and create pathways to publishing opportunities in all forms.
From now until midnight on April 8, writers can submit a 500-word letter of intent, a five-page work sample, an artist CV and an application form to access the program. Fifteen writers will be selected.
Award-winning author Andre Fenton–whose publications include Worthy of Love (2018), ANNAKA (2019) and The Summer Between Us (2022)–established the new collective as a mentorship and workshop series to uplift Black writers in Nova Scotia.
Fenton tells The Coast that forming it “was something I’ve always been toying with since I started working here at the [Bus Stop Theatre Co-op].” He’s also the Writer’s Circle coordinator at the theatre co-op, which runs community workshops out of the basement to help all writers develop works in progress.
The Ink Collective sessions will also run at the co-op; writers will have access to the theatre co-op’s resources.
Ink Collective workshops will mix the creative and informative across 10-15 sessions. There will be coworking spaces and activity-based workshops, where writers will receive prompts and other ways to “challenge ourselves to get into our best creative modes,” says Fenton. Others sessions will include Q&As with groups like the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, as well as publishers and book agents.
The collective will also include a collaboration with the AfterWords Literary Festival, possibly allowing writers to share their work in a performance setting. More broadly, says Fenton, the program will run “as circles where writers can come and share their work and receive feedback, and be a really great peer-run space.”
“Writing on its own is a very solitary activity and can be a very lonely art form,” he says. “Building that community with other writers with the same, shared, lived experiences as you can help foster and validate a lot of stories.”
He wants the collective to “help keep focus for a lot of writers who do feel out of place in certain spaces,” and to be a space that “feels like home for writers who just want to create, pursue or need mentorship.”
Ink Collective facilitators and mentors will include (some serious stars):
El Jones (Live from the Afrikan Resistance)
Francesca Ekwuyasi (Butter Honey Pig Bread)
Chad Lucas (The Vanished Ones)
Wanda Taylor (The Grover School Pledge)
Andre Fenton (The Summer Between Us)
Lindsay Ruck & Bria Miller (This Big Heart)
Annmarie Morais (Showrunner – BET’s The Porter)
Cory Bowles (Director – Black Cop, Law & Order: Organized Crime)
Fenton met Jones at his first-ever poetry slam when he was 18.
“She really motivated me to get up on stage and share my work,” says Fenton, “and I fell into slam after that–got to travel the country, meet so many different poets–and getting into slam spoken word as a young person really taught me empathy, because all you have to do is sit and listen. You don’t need a creative writing degree to get on the open mic and just spit.”
“Sometimes when writing you feel like you’re holding something back–but then it’s like, ‘No, I gotta go all in with it.’”
Then, he met Taylor when she worked as an editor on his first novel, Worthy of Love. “She definitely helped get that book series going, and was such a great mentor for me to navigate transitioning from being a poet to being an author and diving into fiction.”
And Bowles, “he’s a big brother to me and he’s producing my novel, ANNAKA, into a film,” he says. “He’s been great at helping me transition to a screenwriter.”
Fenton, who has a film school background, has written in many forms. Of transitioning his book ANNAKA into a script, he says that, unlike writing a book in which “you’re jumping into a certain character’s mind and you have to know all their fears or anxieties,” when you’re writing for film, “you really have to show it. It goes back to ‘show, don’t tell.’”
He says going “back to my old tools of film” and developing them in a new way “has been such a skillful experience, and I’m always excited to become a student again and work under really great writers like [Bowles].”
He hopes the collective will help other young and emerging writers do the same.
Says Fenton, it’s important to have a dedicated space for Black writers to connect with mentors because this can “really create moments that are both nostalgic but validating and also bring such a good sense of home and belonging.”
He says if the collective can do this and break the idea of writing being a solitary art form, “then we’re on a really great path.”
Partners that have supported the program include the Association of Black Social Workers, the Nova Scotia Advisory Council on the Status of Women, the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia, AfterWords Literary Festival, Delmore “Buddy” Daye Learning Institute, African Nova Scotian Affairs, Halifax Regional Municipality, and Support4Culture.
“Writing is so vulnerable, and I think that we’re so scared to show parts of ourselves. For me, the best way to connect with either an audience or readership or viewership is to show your heart in an open and honest way, and it’s always going to connect with someone, but it’s so, so scary to do that.
“Creating this space will help build that confidence in writing and performing and just sharing, because, sometimes when writing you feel like you’re holding something back–but then it’s like, ‘No, I gotta go all in with it.’”
This article appears in Mar 1-31, 2025.