The path to becoming a writer
Amanda Peters never pictured going to university. Very few in her family had. But in Grade 10, she went with a friend to a university fair at their high school. After that, she knew she would go to university at Mount Allison.
“I was told by some people in high school that people like me did not go to good schools like that,” she says. “So, I got my own application, applied, got in, and graduated with an honours degree in political science.”
From Glooscap First Nation, Peters went on to live and work around the world in Japan, South Korea, and Europe, returning to Nova Scotia in between to earn three master’s degrees from Dalhousie in political science, public administration, and library and information studies.
Once settled into her career working in policy, she turned her focus to her true passion.
“Now I wanted to pursue what I love, which I’ve been doing my whole life — writing.”
She then earned a certificate in creative writing from the University of Toronto and most recently, in 2022, a master’s in fine arts in creative writing from the Institute for American Indian Arts in New Mexico.
During this time, her now award-winning novel, The Berry Pickers, came to life. The story is of a four-year old girl from a Mi’kmaq family who goes missing in Maine’s blueberry fields in the 1960s. Nearly 50 years later, Norma, a young girl from an affluent family is determined to find out what her parents are not telling her. Little by little, the two families’ interconnected secrets unravel.
“The book took me four years to write,” she says, “because, at first, I did not want to write it. My dad was a berry picker in Maine and told me I should write about it, but I write fiction. In 2017 we were there, and he was showing me the fields, and the first line of the first chapter ‘The day Ruthie went missing, the blackflies seemed to be especially hungry,’ just kind of came to me.”
Starting as a short story that she presented at a residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, she then developed it into a novel through her master’s program at the Institute for American Indian Arts.
The book now has many accolades, including The Carnegie Medal for Excellence for Fiction. Peters was the first Canadian to ever receive this honour from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the American Library Association. It was also a finalist for the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers Trust Fiction Prize and was named one of the CBC Books’ best fiction books of the year.
“I was shocked by the success of the book,” she says. “I am still waiting to wake up. I thought people in Nova Scotia might be excited about it and that would be it. Then it went bonkers. I am very humbled and honoured and glad that people can relate to this story because this story means a lot to me and my family. It also has people from around the world learning more about the Mi’kmaw and that is exciting.”
Peters says there are some fun nods to her real life throughout the book, like birthdays and character’s names — Joe is her grandpa’s name, and Leah is named after one of her best friends from Mount Allison, Leah (Eddy) Hunter (BMus ‘99).
Peters is now an associate professor in the Department of English and Theatre at Acadia University. She recently launched a collection of short fiction, Waiting for the long night moon, and will be touring this fall to promote both books across Canada and the U.S.
Read more about Peters’ work at