Cooper Skjeie and Zak Jones win $10K RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for emerging Canadian writers
CBC Books | Posted: June 2, 2023 12:27 AM | Last Updated: June 2, 2023
The award recognizes writers who have not yet been published in book form
Cooper Skjeie and Zak Jones were named the winners of the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for emerging Canadian writers.
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.
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 prize used to alternate between a short fiction and a poetry winner each year, but has given out awards in both categories annually since 2020.
Skjeie won the poetry prize for Scattered Oblations.
"Scattered Oblations paints an exquisite landscape. The poems are simultaneously soft and gritty, inviting introspection, exposing dark truths, and demanding imperative answers. Wonder and rage coexist in this collection, producing 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," the jury said in a statement.
The poetry category was judged by Cicely Belle Blain, shalan joudry and Sue Sinclair.
Skjeie is a Saskatoon mixed settler/Métis poet and teacher whose work has been published in Prairie Fire Magazine, Grain Magazine and PRISM international.
The other finalists for the poetry prize were Kyo Lee and Dora Prieto. They will each receieve $2,500.
LISTEN | Cooper Skjeie on being nominated for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award:
Jones won the fiction prize for So Much More to Say.
"In So Much More to Say, Zak Jones digs his shovel into narrative terrain perpetually at the risk of breaking apart, much like the flooding South Carolina cemetery where his story is set. We are invited into the world of a young gravedigger who has the Sisyphean task of reburying the bloated bodies that come loose after rains free them from the red mud in which they have been encased. 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," the jury said in a statement.
The short fiction category was judged by David Huebert, Janice Lynn Mather and Dimitri Nasrallah.
Jones is a Toronto writer, teacher and labour organizer whose work has appeared in Vallum Magazine, Prism International and The Ex-Puritan.
The other finalists for the fiction category were Vincent Anioke and Zilla Jones. They will each receive $2,500.
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.