Born in Hants Co., Nova Scotia, in 1933, Alden Nowlan moved to Hartland, New Brunswick, when he was nineteen, and worked on the Hartland Observer as reporter, editor, and general facilitator until he went to Saint John (and the Telegraph Journal) in 1963. In 1968 he was invited to take up the position of Writer-in-Residence at the University of New Brunswick in Fredericton. Alden Nowlan died on June 27th, 1983.

David Adams Richards is a resident of Fredericton and is one of only three Canadian writers who have won Governor General's Awards for Fiction and Non-Fiction. His novel Mercy Among the Children won the 2000 Giller Prize, while his most recent novel, Incidents in the Life of Marcus Paul, won the 2012 Thomas H. Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.