WINNERS

2005

Short Story

First Prize - English
Erin Soros - The Chorus

Erin Soros was born and raised in Vancouver where she worked as a rape crisis counselor and as a coordinator of literacy programs for marginalized youth. She completed a MA in English at UBC and an MFA in Writing from Columbia University. In 2005, Erin was the George Bennett Writer-in-Residence at Phillips Exeter Academy. Her awards include a Fulbright Fellowship and the Governor General's Gold Medal. Her fiction, non-fiction and poetry have appeared in Canadian, American and Australian journals. A recent publication was chosen as a "Notable Essay" in The Best American Essays 2005. Erin is at work on her first novel.

Second Prize - English
Ahmad Saidullah - Happiness and Other Disorders

Ahmad Saidullah was born in Ottawa in 1958. He has worked as an editor and a lexicographer and is now a policy research consultant. In 2006, he launched The Village Green Rag, an e-zine for new and emerging writers from all over the world. Ahmad started writing fiction seriously in 2004. The Happiness story is taken from his first novel Fifteen Sketches of Rumi. He wrote the book in ten months mostly at night and on weekends while laid up with a bad back. He is looking for an agent and publisher for Rumi. Ahmad is working on another novel.

Poetry

First Prize - English
Alison Pick - The Mind's Eye

Alison Pick is the author of the novel The Sweet Edge, a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2005. The title section of her poetry collection, Question & Answer, won the 2002 Bronwen Wallace Award for most promising writer under 35, and the 2003 National Magazine Award for Poetry. The book itself was short-listed for both the Gerald Lampert Award for best first book of poetry in Canada, and for a Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award. Alison grew up in Kitchener, and spent summers in Quebec's Eastern Townships. Her first manuscript was written while living in Saskatchewan at a Benedictine monastery, then at a cattle ranch, and then in Saskatoon. She now divides her time between Ontario and St. John's, Newfoundland.

Second Prize - English
Paulette Dubé - First Mountain

Because her parents made it to a hospital on time, Paulette Dubé was born in Westlock, Alberta. Growing up in the French village of Legal, she watched her third sister being born on the kitchen table and was suddenly sentient to miracles. She relies heavily on the good fortune of living in Jasper National Park these days for her inspiration.

Talon, her first novel, made the short lists for the 1999 Canadian Literary Awards, the Alberta Writers' Guild Best Novel Award (2003) and the Starburst Award (2003). Her poetry garnered a number of rewards including the Milton Acorn Memorial People's Poetry Award (1994), the CBC Alberta Anthology (1998) and now the CBC Literary Awards (2005).

Creative Nonfiction

First Prize - English
Kim Echlin - I, Witness

Kim Echlin has been a documentary-maker, editor and teacher. She has worked and travelled in Europe, China, the Marshall Islands, Africa and Cambodia. She currently writes and teaches in Toronto where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Her fiction includes Elephant Winter, which won a Torgi Award and was nominated for a Books in Canada first novel award, Dagmar's Daughter, and a translation from Sumerian, Inanna. She would like to acknowledge the role of mentors Barbara Moon and Linda Gaboriau, both at the Banff Centre for the Arts, in the development of her exploration of the essay. She is currently working on a novel set in Cambodia.

Second Prize - English
Jane Silcott - DRAFTS 1 - 11 (not including 10)

Jane Silcott moved to the west coast 30 years ago from Toronto to ski and climb and live in a milk truck in the mountains. Now she lives in a house with her husband and two children, using the skills from her past life to scale the mountains of household chores on the way to her attic writing office. Jane has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC, and her fiction and non-fiction have appeared in a variety of literary magazines. She recently completed a novel and is working on a series of prose poems. Jane Silcott has spent most of her life as Jane Hamilton, but recently adopted her grandmother's name as a pseudonym to prevent further confusion with not just one, but two other writers with her birth name.