WritersNL’s Lifetime Members
WritersNL is proud to offer Lifetime Memberships to our organization to individuals who have made major contributions to the local literary landscape in Newfoundland and Labrador.
Our Lifetime Members are:
Lillian Bouzane
Bernice Morgan
Tom Dawe
Helen Porter*
Ed Kavanagh
Joan Clark*
Nkwazi Nkuzi Mhango
Anne Hart*
Brian O’Dea
Patrick O’Flaherty*
Thomas Moore
Lisa Moore
(* indicates that the Member has passed)
A new Lifetime Member is celebrated annually at WritersNL’s Annual General Meeting.
Want to nominate a Member for this honour? Email WritersNL at info@writersnl.ca.
WritersNL sends congratulations to our 2023 Lifetime Member and our 2023 Volunteer of the Year:
Lifetime Member 2023: Glenn Deir
Glenn Deir is a former reporter with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation in St. John’s. He was also a journalist in Calgary, Charlottetown, Halifax and Tokyo.
For two years, Glenn worked for NHK, the Japan Broadcasting Corporation, where he happily stumbled through the conundrums of Japanese culture. Then he got tonsil cancer and less happily stumbled through the conundrums of medical culture. Both experiences inspired his first book – Sick Joke: Cancer, Japan and Back Again. (Breakwater Books 2010) The memoir was short-listed for a NL Book Award in 2011.
After swearing he would never write a novel because making stuff up is hard work, Glenn wrote a satire about a newsroom. He brought over three decades worth of journalistic black humour to his novel –The Money Shot. (Breakwater Books 2016)
Glenn has been Vice President of WritersNL and Chair of its Literary Awards Committee, Chair of the Atlantic Journalism Awards, and juror for the Percy Janes First Novel Award as well as the Kiwanis Club High School Short Story Award.
Volunteer of the Year 2023: Amanda Labonté
Amanda Labonté is the author of eight novels, including Call of the Sea, which was released by Halifax-based Fierce Ink Books in November, 2015. In the winter of 2023, she began working as a publisher with After Books Inc.
Amanda served as WritersNL’s treasurer for four years and more recently as an events committee volunteer.
Amanda has a bachelor of arts and a masters of business from Memorial University and has worked in journalism, communications and small business management. She lives with her partner, two children, and two cats in St. John’s, NL.