The Cabot Trail Writers Festival is delighted to host a reading, conversation and audience Q&A with the three authors nominated for the 2026 Alistair MacLeod Prize for Short Fiction: Geoff Butler (We, the Ancestors), Shelley Thompson (Winter Sky: Stories for the Season) and Heidi Wicks (Here).
The evening will be hosted by author and comics artist Kate Beaton. We’re very pleased to bring these three extraordinary writers (see below for their bios) together to share their work and celebrate their nomination for an Atlantic Book Award particularly dear to Cape Breton hearts, named in honour of one of our most beloved authors.
This is the second year our organization has had the honour of administering this award (in partnership with Atlantic Book Awards, with prize funding generously donated by Bookmark Booksellers Inc.), in memory of one of the great writers of our island, a master of the short-fiction form. We cannot imagine three finer writers to carry forward Alistair MacLeod's legacy.
This event will be pay-what-you-can (recommended: $15). All proceeds will go towards the award and event costs. Books will be available for sale, a cash bar with alcoholic and non-alcoholic drinks will be open, and light refreshments will be served. Our thanks to the Inverness County Centre for the Arts for generously opening their doors to welcome us into their space to share this beautiful evening of laughter, inspiration and stories...
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Geoff Butler is a painter, writer and book illustrator. He has self-published multiple books for adults and children, and his paintings have been exhibited at, and toured by, the Art Gallery of Nova Scotia. In 2006, he was elected a member of the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts. He lives in the small village of Granville Ferry, N.S.
Shelley Thompson is a writer, director and activist. She is based in Wolfville, Mi'kma'ki. Her first directorial feature (Dawn, Her Dad & the Tractor) won the 2022 Nova Scotia Masterworks Arts Award. A multiple ACTRA award-winner, Thompson continues to work on stage and screen while building her writing, directing and producing credits. Her debut novel, Roar, was nominated for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award and the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award.
Heidi Wicks's debut novel, Melt, was featured in the Globe and Mail's Hot Summer Reads list and received a silver medal IPPY (Independent Publisher) award. She also received the 2019 Cox & Palmer Creative Writing Award. Her work is featured in the short fiction collection Hard Ticket and the creative nonfiction collection Best Kind. She lives in her beloved hometown of St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.
Kate Beaton (event host) was born and raised in Cape Breton, where she lives with her family. Beaton’s experience working in the oil patch informed her bestselling graphic memoir, Ducks: Two Years in the Oil Sands, a New York Times Notable Book and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2022. It also won CBC’s 2023 Canada Reads. During her years out West, Beaton also began creating webcomics under the name Hark! A Vagrant. The collections of that landmark strip, as well as Step Aside, Pops, spent several months on the New York Times graphic novel bestseller list. Beaton has also published the picture books King Baby, The Princess and the Pony, and Shark Girl.