6 emerging Canadian writers shortlisted for $10K RBC Bronwen Wallace Awards
The Writers' Trust of Canada has revealed the 2023 finalists for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award. The prize recognizes emerging Canadian writers in both poetry and short fiction who are unpublished in book form.
The winner of each prize will receive $10,000. Each finalist will receive $2,500.
This prize was established in 1994 to honour the life and career of Bronwen Wallace, a poet and short story writer who felt that writers should have more opportunities for recognition early in their careers.
The annual award is sponsored by RBC Emerging Artists, an initiative that recognizes writers who have been published but who have not yet been published in book form.
The finalists for the poetry prize are Kyo Lee, Dora Prieto and Cooper Skjeie.
Lee is a Korean-Canadian student, social activist and writer from Waterloo, Ont. She is nominated for diasporic dissonance.
"Sometimes vulnerable, sometimes fierce, sometimes both, Kyo Lee asks urgent questions about language, race, family, and beauty" said the jury.
Prieto is a Vancouver poet currently completing her MFA in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. She is nominated for her work, Notes on the Non-Place.
"Notes on the Non-Place unfolds the shapes of the unique and common while inspecting the mourning and power of belonging," said the jury. "Dora Prieto whispers, cajoles, and shakes loose personal particles of the human journey."
Skjeie is a Saskatoon mixed settler/Métis poet and teacher whose work has been published in Prairie Fire Magazine, Grain Magazine and PRISM international. He is nominated for Scattered Oblations.
"A scintillating narrative that is both personal and universal, seemingly expanding the bounds of time and space while remaining firmly rooted in the fundamental urgency of Indigenous land sovereignty," said the jury.
The poetry category was judged by Cicely Belle Blain, shalan joudry and Sue Sinclair.
The finalists for the short fiction prize are Vincent Anioke, Zak Jones and Zilla Jones.
Anioke is a writer and software engineer based in Waterloo, Ont., who previously won the Austin Clarke Prize in Literary Excellence in 2021 and was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize the same year. He is nominated for Mama's Lullabies.
Anioke has been longlisted twice for the CBC Short Story Prize for his story Utopia.
"Poised and poetic, riveting and understated, this story handles a domestic tragedy with the subtlety, care, and imagistic density of short fiction at its best," said the jury.
Zak Jones is a Toronto writer, teacher and labour organizer whose work has appeared in Vallum Magazine, PRISM international and The Ex-Puritan. He is nominated for So Much More to Say.
"Navigating race relations and human dignity, the impeccable drawl of the author's first-person narrator turns potential horrors into profundities, and cautionary tales into wisdoms," said the jury.
Zilla Jones is a Winnipeg writer and lawyer. She has won The Malahat Review's Open Season Award, PRISM international's Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction, and the Writers' Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She is nominated for Triggered.
She previously made the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for How to Make a Friend, the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Our Father and in 2022, she was longlisted for an earlier version of How to Make a Friend.
"Zilla Jones writes with rare vibrance and linguistic economy in this haunting and memorable story of a boy's quest for honesty, love, and home," said the jury.
The short fiction category was judged by David Huebert, Janice Lynn Mather and Dimitri Nasrallah.
The 2022 winners will be announced at a Toronto event on June 1.
Last year's winners were Patrick James Errington and Teya Hollier for the poetry collection If Fire, Then Bird and the short story Watching, Waiting, respectively.
Michael Crummey was the first writer to receive the prize. Other past winners include Maria Reva, Jeramy Dodds, Alison Pick and Alissa York.
The Writers' Trust of Canada is a charitable organization that seeks to advance, nurture and celebrate Canadian writers and writing. Its programming includes 11 national literary awards, financial grants, career development initiatives for emerging writers and a writers' retreat.
The organization was founded in 1976 by Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Graeme Gibson, Margaret Laurence and David Young. It gave out more than $970,000 to support Canadian writers in 2020.
