The Writers' Trust of Canada announced that Faith Paré (poetry) and Nayani Jensen (short fiction) are winners of this year's RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, which was established in memory of poet and short story writer Bronwen Wallace and "has a proven track record of helping talented developing authors secure their first book deal." Each winning author receives C$10,000 (about US$7,330).
Paré won for her poetry collection Selections from "A fine African head", which the jury called "stunning and necessary," adding that the poems "are not merely inspired by a historical event but emerge ingeniously from it. Faith Paré returns the truth not only to the victims, but also to the survivors of the 1969 Sir George Williams University computer centre incident. This urgent, chimerical, and devastating work is finely crafted from the unreliability of archive and the misery of memory."
Jensen won for her short story collection Like Rabbits, which the jury praised as "historical fiction at its most intimate and convincing. This story beautifully harks back to the golden age of Dutch science, a time when men played gods. As one such man attempts to conceive with his wife, he seeks credit for his groundbreaking discoveries at great personal cost--only to face tragedy and his own mortality. With elegance, authority, and vitality, Nayani Jensen gives us a timeless story of ambition and a tender portrait of a marriage."
The other finalists for the poetry prize were Balcony buffalo by Ashleigh A. Allen and Hiraeth by Sneha Subramanian Kanta. The other short fiction prize finalists were Our Rez Anomaly by Henry Heavyshield and ON VENLAFAXINE AND GHOSTS by Reid Kerr Keller. Each writer receives C$2,500 (about US$1,830).