Throat singer Tanya Tagaq has won the award for published prose in English for her first book Split Tooth at the Indigenous Voices Awards. The winners of the second annual competition were announced at a celebration at the University of British Columbia on June 4.

Prize money totalling $16,000 was presented across seven categories. The IVAs are a celebration of Indigenous writers that began as a crowdfunded campaign in opposition to the suggestion of an “appropriation prize.”

The complete list of winners is listed below:

Published Prose in English
• Split Tooth, Tanya Tagaq (Viking Canada)

Published Poetry in English
• You are Enough: Love Poems for the End of the World, Smokii Sumac (Kegedonce Press)

Published Works in French
• Uiesh, Quelque Part, Joséphine Bacon (Mémoire d’encrier)
• Nipimanitu, Pierrot Ross-Tremblay (Prise de parole)

Work in an Indigenous Language
• Iskotew Iskwew, Francine Merasty

Unpublished Prose in English
•  Selection from “Teenage Asylums,” Francine Cunningham

Unpublished Poetry in English
• “Brush of a Bustle,” Elaine McArthur

Works in an Alternative Format
• Surviving the City, Tasha Spillett and Natasha Donovan, ill. (HighWater Press)