6 emerging Canadian writers shortlisted for $10K RBC Bronwen Wallace Awards
The prize recognizes writers in both poetry and short fiction
The Writers' Trust of Canada has revealed the 2024 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 The prize recognizes emerging Canadian writers in both poetry and short fiction who are unpublished in book form.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 finalists for the poetry prize are Ashleigh A. Allen, Faith Paré and Sneha Subramanian Kanta.
Allen is a poet, writer and educator. She is a PhD candidate at University of Toronto and has been published in Prism International, Room, Contemporary Verse 2 and The Malahat Review. She was longlisted for the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize.
"Confident and ready, Ashleigh A. Allen's poems treat myth and story, rhyme and sound as the material for ancestral exploration," said the poetry jury, which was composed of Derek Beaulieu, Kama La Mackerel and Joanna Lilley.
Paré is a Montreal-based poet and performer of Afro-Guyanese ancestry. Her work can be found in publications including The Capilano Review, The Ex-Puritan and Contemporary Verse 2. She won the first-ever Quebec Writers' Federation's Mairuth Sarsfield Mentorship and is currently working on her poetry collection.
"Faith Paré's urgent, chimerical and devastating work is finely crafted from the unreliability of archive and the misery of memory," said the jury in a press release.
Kanta is a Hamilton-based writer of five chapbooks. Her work appears in Prairie Schooner, Shenandoah and Contemporary Verse 2. She is a founding editor of Parentheses Journal and her work has been supported by Ontario Arts Council, Tin House, the Charles Wallace Trust, the Vijay Nambisan Foundation, the Writers' Union of Canada, British Council and Rutgers University.
"Sneha Subramanian Kanta's rhythmic stanzas bring forth the most intimate feelings and meditations of a poet pondering questions of exile, nostalgia, motherhood and homeland," said the jury.
The finalists for the short fiction prize are Henry Heavyshield, Nayani Jensen and Reid Kerr-Keller.
Heavyshield is a writer from the Kainai First Nation whose work has appeared in the publications C Magazine, Kimiwan Zine and The Ex-Puritan. He participated in Audible's Indigenous Writers' Circle program and won the 2023 Riddle Fence Poetry Contest and the 2023 Capilano Review's Fall Writing Contest. He is a community engagement organizer for the City of Calgary's Indigenous Public Art program.
"With a sharp voice and propulsive narrative, Henry Heavyshield gifts us a story that is both playful and contemplative," said the fiction jury in a press statement. It was composed of writers Jessica Johns, Maria Reva and Jack Wang.
Jensen is writer and science historian. Born and raised in Halifax, she studied mechanical engineering and then English literature and the history of science as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. She is currently pursuing a PhD at the University of Toronto and working on her short story collection.
"With elegance, authority and vitality, Nayani Jensen gives us a timeless story of ambition and a tender portrait of a marriage," said the jury.
Kerr-Keller is a Toronto-based writer and the Head of Content at Miami Ad School. His work has been published in Queen's Alumni Review and Elegant Literature.
"There are no easy antagonists in Reid Kerr-Keller's work; he skillfully crafts complex characters that are heroes of their own worlds," said the jury.
The 2024 winners will be announced at a Toronto event on June 3. Their work can be found on the Writers' Trust website.
Last year's winners were Cooper Skjeie and Zak Jones for the poetry collection Scattered Oblations and the short story So Much More to Say, 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.
