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The Next Generation: Youth Mentorship Readings

Presented by Arts Nova Scotia’s Artists in Communities program

With Luisa Ensslin, Stephanie Coldwell, Daniel Park, KR Byggdin, francesca ekwuyasi, and Sue Goyette

Sunday, November 1, 2026
1:30 pm
to 3:00 pm
RBC Room, Halifax Central Library
$0.00

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Description

Celebrate new work by our 2026 Youth Mentorship grads Luisa Ensslin, Stephanie Coldwell, and Halifax Youth Poet Laureate Daniel Park, along with readings by our mentors KR Byggdin, francesca ekwuyasi, and Sue Goyette. Presented by Arts Nova Scotia’s Artists in Communities program

Speakers

  • Luisa Ensslin (she/her) is a writer currently living in Halifax. She enjoys reading novels with ambitious female protagonists and eating ice cream.
  • Stephanie Coldwell is a high school student who lives in Halifax. She likes to write, read, and bake. She can be found at her local library doing anything but studying.
  • Daniel Park, the municipal Youth Poet Laureate, is a 16-year-old Korean writer and gardener based in Halifax. Daniel’s writing is shaped by movement and the emotions found in the natural world, drawing inspiration from the beauty and resilience of nature.  

  • K.R. Byggdin is the author of Wonder World, a ReLit Award finalist and winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. They hold degrees in writing from Dalhousie University and the University of Guelph, and their short stories, poetry, and creative nonfiction have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada, the UK, and New Zealand. Born and raised on the Prairies, they now reside on the East Coast.

  • francesca ekwuyasi is a writer, artist, and filmmaker born in Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging. Her writing has been published in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and GUTS magazine. Her story "Orun is Heaven" was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize. Butter Honey Pig Bread is her first novel; it won the Writers' Trust of Canada Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers; was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, and a Lambda Literary Award, and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. In 2021, Butter Honey Pig Bread was named runner-up in CBC's Canada Reads competition.

  • Sue Goyette lives in K'jipuktuk (Halifax) and has published several books of poems and a novel. Her latest collection is Future Howl, (Gaspereau Press, 2025). She is the editor of Resistance: Righteous Rage in the Age of #MeToo (University of Regina Press, 2021), The 2017 Griffin Poetry Prize Anthology (Anansi, 2017) and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2013 (Tightrope Books, 2013). Her work has been translated into French, Spanish and German and has been featured in films, subways, buses, spray painted on a sidewalk and tattooed. Her work has been nominated for the 2014 Griffin Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Award and has won several awards including the 2015 Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award for her collection, Ocean; J.M. Abraham Poetry Award; the ReLit Award; the Pat Lowther Award for Poetry; the Bliss Carman Poetry Award; the Earle Birney Award; and the CBC Literary Award for Poetry.