Toronto writer Em Dial wins PEN Canada's 2020 New Voices Award
CBC Books | | Posted: August 25, 2020 8:58 PM | Last Updated: August 25, 2020
Toronto writer Em Dial has won the 2020 PEN Canada's 2020 New Voices Award. The $3,000 prize recognizes unpublished Canadian writers under the age of 30. The prize also comes with a six-month mentorship with an established Canadian writer.
Writers were encouraged to submit work in any format, including poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction.
Dial is a 25-year-old poet and educator currently working in urban agriculture. Their work has appeared in Tinderbox Poetry Journal, Crab Fat Magazine and Sonora Review. They won the the 2019 Mary C. Mohr Poetry Award and will be a 2021 Kundiman Fellow.
Dial won for the poem Lineage Without the Bullet.
"A lot of my writing touches on the peculiarities of being triracial and what that looks like in our modern racial and political landscape," Dial said in a press statement. "For me, being triracial, compounded with other marginalized identities creates a specific loneliness and that's what I spent almost a year percolating on to create this piece."
Dial was chosen from 175 submissions. The jury was comprised of Scotiabank Giller Prize winners Ian Williams and Lynn Coady, and broadcaster and novelist Bill Richardson.
"Sophisticated, surprising, intelligent, compassionate and formally inventive, Lineage Without the Bullet connects the past to the present to the future, connects the personal to the public and touches in ways that are more than glancing on such timely and complex considerations as race, gender and violence. This is the work of someone who is more than a writer to watch, but rather one who is fully evolved," the jury said in a statement.
The jury also chose four finalists, who will reach receive a one-year membership to PEN Canada. They are Harpit Samra, Yasmina Jaksic, Richard Joseph and Jeffrey To.
Last year's winner was poet Noor Naga.
Naga released the poetry book Washes, Prays in 2020 and her debut novel, American Girl and Boy from Shobrakheit is forthcoming fall 2021.
Other previous winners include Claire Battershill, Mikko Harvey and Jaclyn Desforges.