Jessica Johns

Four winners have been announced as part of the Writers’ Trust Awards: Emerging Writers Edition. The event presented four prizes: the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in both the short fiction and poetry categories, the Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for short fiction, and the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. Each winner receives $10,000.

Toronto’s Leah Mol won the Bronwen Wallace award for her unpublished short fiction “Six Things My Father Taught Me About Bears,” about a child narrator and a single father. Ontario’s Alexa Winik won the Bronwen Wallace for poetry for her unpublished “Selections from Winter Stars Visible in December,” which plays on connections between astrology and literature.

The Journey Prize for short fiction published in a literary journal went to Vancouver’s Jessica Johns for her story “Bad Cree,” originally published in Grain, about how an Indigenous protagonist finds lessons in the land, its people, and the crow. Johns was festival director of this year’s Growing Room Literary & Arts Festival.

The Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers went to Halifax’s Arielle Twist, who reflects on her experience as an Indigenous trans woman in her debut poetry collection Disintegrate/Dissociate, published last year by Arsenal Pulp Press.

The winners and finalists are listed below.

RBC BRONWEN WALLACE AWARD FOR EMERGING WRITERS – SHORT FICTION

Winner ($10,000)

• “Six Things My Father Taught Me About Bears,” Leah Mol

Finalists ($2,500)

• “This Hard Easy Life,” Jamaluddin Aram
• “Palestinian Still Life,” Omer Friedlander

Jury
Kris Bertin, Djamila Ibrahim, and Carrianne Leung

RBC BRONWEN WALLACE AWARD FOR EMERGING WRITERS – POETRY

Winner ($10,000)

• “Selections from Winter Stars Visible in December,” Alexa Winik

Finalists ($2,500)

• “c:ode,” nina jane drystek
• “Selection from [CA$H4GOLD],” Zoe Imani Sharpe

Jury
Klara du Plessis, Benjamin Hertwig, and Canisia Lubrin

WRITERS’ TRUST MCCLELLAND & STEWART JOURNEY PRIZE

Winner ($10,000)
“Bad Cree” (Grain), Jessica Johns

Finalists ($1,000)

• “Hunting” (Taddle Creek), Lisa Foad
• “Chemical Valley” (The Fiddlehead), David Huebert

Jury
Amy Jones, Doretta Lau, and Téa Mutonji

DAYNE OGILVIE PRIZE FOR LGBTQ EMERGING WRITERS

Winner ($10,000)
Arielle Twist

Finalists ($1,000)

• Robyn Maynard
• Smokii Sumac

Jury
Trevor Corkum, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, and Lindsay Nixon