Jordan Abel, Kai Cheng Thom and Ruth B. to judge 2018 CBC Poetry Prize
Jordan Abel, Kai Cheng Thom and Ruth B. are the judges for the 2018 CBC Poetry Prize.
The CBC Poetry Prize recognizes unpublished Canadian poetry. The winning author will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, attend a 10-day writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books. Four finalists will win $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and have their work published on CBC Books.
Jordan Abel is a Nisga'a writer from British Columbia. He is the author of Un/inhabited and The Place of Scraps, which won the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. In 2017, his collection Injun won the Griffin Poetry Prize. Abel's creative work has recently been anthologized in Best Canadian Poetry, The Land We Are: Artists and Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation and The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century. He is currently pursuing a PhD at Simon Fraser University where his research concentrates on intergenerational trauma and Indigenous literature.
Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performance artist and therapist. She is the author of the children's book From the Stars in the Sky to the Fish in the Sea, a semi-autobiographical poetry collection called a place called No Homeland and the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl's Confabulous Memoir, for which she was nominated for a Lamba Literary Award. Thom won the Writers' Trust of Canada's 2017 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ emerging writers.
Ruth B. is a singer-songwriter from Edmonton. Her debut album, Safe Haven, was released to critical acclaim with Rolling Stone declaring Ruth B. "one to watch." In 2017, she received a JUNO Award for breakthrough artist of the year and a BMI Pop Award for her viral hit Lost Boy.
The 2018 CBC Poetry Prize is open until May 31, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. ET.
Last year's winner was Alessandra Naccarato for Postcards for my Sister. You can read the entire 2017 shortlist here.