BMO Winterset Award Finalists and Gala

ANGELA ANTLE is a writer, artist, and documentary maker based in St. John’s, Newfoundland and is the winner of the 2025 BMO Winterset Award. Antle’s writing has appeared in Riddle Fence, Newfoundland Quarterly, and CBC.ca. She wrote and directed Gander’s Ripple Effect: How a Small Town’s Kindness Opened on Broadway, and wrote the feature-length Irish-Norwegian-Canadian documentary Atlantic: What Lies Beneath. As a journalist, Angela has rowed a dory through the Narrows, covered the subculture of Florida’s Spring Break, taken bumpy komatik rides on the coast of Labrador, hitchhiked from France to Newfoundland on a fishing boat, interviewed a Prime Minister on Broadway, and recorded Ron Hynes singing “Sonny’s Dream” in Ireland. She is an interdisciplinary PhD candidate at Memorial University, a member of Norway’s Empowered Futures Energy School, and was the 2025 Rachel Carson Writer in Residence at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

DEBBIE MCGEE made her first film in Vancouver in 1983, and her last film in St. John’s in 2013. In between those markers, she worked as a writer and director of short dramas and nfb documentaries before joining the Media Unit at Memorial University of Newfoundland and Labrador as Producer / Director. She has been an active volunteer with arts organizations throughout her career, serving on many boards, juries, and councils. She lives in St. John’s. Her films and awards are available for viewing on her website: debbiemcgee.ca.

MACKENZIE NOLAN was born and raised in Newfoundland. Working professionally as a social worker for several years, she found herself better suited to writing interpersonal dynamics, rather than solving them. She lives in St. John’s, NL. Veal is the first novel in her two-book deal with ECW Press.

HOLLY HOGAN is a writer and seabird biologist. During her decades as a scientist, she has spent over a thousand days at sea conducting marine wildlife surveys and providing educational programming with expedition teams.  Her work has taken her from the Arctic to the Antarctic Oceans, and every latitude in between. She appears in a National Film Board series called Ocean School, and provided expertise on seabirds and the impact of marine plastic for the award-winning documentary Hell or Clean Water (2021). Her book Message in a Bottle: Ocean Dispatches from a Seabird Biologist won the 2023 BMO Winterset Award and was a finalist for the 2023 Science Writers and Communicators of Canada Book Award as well as the 2023 Governor-General’s Award for non-fiction. She lives in St. John’s