The Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick (WFNB) has announced the winners of their annual Literary Competition. You can hear many of the prize winners read from their work at WordsSpring 2010 in Fredericton, May 15, during the WFNB Literary Awards Banquet. See www.wfnb.ca for more details. Congratulations to all the winners listed below:
Non Fiction, Judged by Jon Tattrie
1st – “The Pentecostalist Wedding,” Noeline Bridge, Moncton, NB
2nd – “A Deaf Sense of Smell,” Jessie Carson, Almonte, ON
3rd – “Les Pierres de Paris,” Elaine Amyot, Dieppe, NB
“The Pentecostal Wedding is a great, high-energy story that captures the wedding better than any video camera ever could. It starts in a whirlwind of activity and keeps up the manic pace right to the end, giving a feel for an emotionally and physically stormy, wild day. The wedding guests come across as giddy, almost crazed, and you can feel the narrator being pulled back into that world, but resisting.”
Individual Poem, Judged by Shoshanna Wingate
1st – “The Carnage” Nancy King Schofield, Grand Barachois, NB
2nd – “Crow Impressions” Edith Miller, Fredericton, NB
3rd – “Upon Leaving the Branch,” Debbie Okun Hill, Camlachie, ON
“[The Carnage] slips between a storyteller’s distance and a witnesses’ remembrance. It gains its strength from the marriage of the two. And yet “Carnage” also weaves in language reminiscent of our favorite myths, and so the story is given a dreamlike quality, a rhythm that suggests we are allowed, even expected, to hang our realist’s hat on the hook at the door and are welcomed in to sit at the fire and listen to a strange tale about ourselves.”
Short Fiction, Judged by Steven Mayoff
1st – “The Weaver,” Roger Moore, Island View, NB
2nd – “Incomplete,” Chuck Lovatt, Carroll, MB
3rd – “Puzzles,” Paul Healey, Rothesay, NB
HM- “The Pellet Gun,” Paul Healey, Rothesay, NB
“In [The Weaver] the cultural and economic divisions between a tourist and an aboriginal weaver are bridged through the weaver’s craft. The author employs concise and evocative prose that seems in itself to unfold like a tapestry. A skillful balance between poetic imagery and political reality keeps the reader engaged at all times.”
Writing for Children, Judged by Noreen Smiley
1st – “The Afterthoughts at Christmastime,” Paul Rowe, St. John’s, NL
2nd – “Skink on the Brink,” Lisa Dalrymple, Fergus, ON
3rd – “Rosella’s Messy Room,” Judy Stoddart, Winnipeg, MB
HM – “The Promise,” Wendy Kitts, Moncton, NB
HM – “Trixie, Who is Wonderful,” Harriet Zaidman, Winnipeg, MB
HM – “K.C. The Super Sleuth: The Cat that Swallowed the Canary,”
Kelly Trevors Picard, Quispamsis, NB
“[The Afterthoughts at Chistmastime] is steeped in nostalgia, embracing the reader like a warm familiar blanket. A fine attention to detail captures a time and place when life was more innocent and when sledding in the dark was full of magic. The writer deftly offers up one strong image after another, slowly building a picture of this loving and slightly eccentric family and managing to pull off a satisfying and quite perfect ending.”
David Adams Richards Prize, Judged by JoAnne Soper-Cook
Winner – “The Meaning of Children,” Beverly Akerman, Montreal, QC
HM – “The Burning Bush and Other Stories,” Laura M. Robinson, Kingston, ON
HM – “Black Ice,” Noeline Bridge, Moncton, NB
“The author [of The Meaning of Children] shows a keen, incisive vision into the hidden world of children as well as intimate knowledge of the secret spaces that exist between the everyday events of life. There is knowledge here, knowledge of those important, life defining moments of puberty, the birth of a sibling, an encounter with a possibly dangerous stranger. Overall, a work with a brilliant sense of story.”
Alfred G. Bailey Prize, Judged by Mark Callanan
Winner – “The Wailing Machines,” Rob Taylor, Vancouver BC
“The poems here, whether celebrating small moments of tenderness and intimacy, or contemplating the horrors humanity so often visits upon its own, seem to answer the question posed by Mary Oliver in an epigraph that adorns the first section of this book: “how to love this world.” The answer is to find the primal, animal energy that animates our race, and to reflect back to us that energy so that we can more clearly see ourselves, in all our beauty and in all our ugliness.”
