Poet Ben Ladouceur wins $4K LGBTQ emerging writers prize
Ben Ladouceur has won the Writers' Trust of Canada's $4,000 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ emerging writers. The 2018 edition of the annual prize — presented to a promising writer who identifies as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer — was awarded June 16, 2018, during the Canadian Writers' Summit in Toronto.
Ottawa-based Ladouceur's first poetry collection, Otter, was published in 2015. His previous awards include the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award in 2016 and Earle Birney Poetry Prize in 2012.
The other two finalists — who will each receive $250 — were Joshua Whitehead and Trish Salah. Whitehead is an author from Peguis First Nation in Manitoba who has published a poetry collection called full-metal indigiqueer and a novel, Johnny Appleseed. Salah is a professor of gender studies at Queen's University and author of two poetry collections, including Wanting In Arabic, which won the 2014 Lambda Literary Award for best transgender fiction.
The jury, composed of Ali Blythe, Greg Kearney and Shannon Webb-Campbell, selected the 2018 finalists.
Toronto-based poet and author Kai Cheng Thom — whose recent work includes the poetry collection a place called No Homeland and the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars — won the award in 2017. Other past winners include Zoe Whittall, Farzana Doctor and Amber Dawn.