24th Annual Writing Contest Judges

Short Fiction

Photo credit for Casey Plett: Eldredge Morrissey

Casey Plett

​Casey Plett is the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, A Safe Girl to Love, and the co-editor of Meanwhile, Elsewhere: Science Fiction and Fantasy From Transgender Writers. She has written for The New York Times, The Guardian, The Globe and Mail, McSweeney's Internet Tendency, the Winnipeg Free Press, among others. A winner of the Amazon First Novel Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction, and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award, her work has also been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. She splits her time between New York City and Windsor, Ontario and is the Publisher at LittlePuss Press.

Poetry

Billy-Ray Belcourt

Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He lives in Vancouver, where he is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. His books are THIS WOUND IS A WORLD, winner of the 2018 Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize, NDN COPING MECHANISMS, longlisted for Canada Reads 2020, and A HISTORY OF MY BRIEF BODY, a finalist for the 2020 Governor General's Literary Award for Non-Fiction and winner of the 2021 Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize

BIPOC Personal Essay

Photo credit: Katherine Holland

Chelene Knight

​Chelene Knight is the author of the Braided Skin and the memoir Dear Current Occupant, winner of the 2018 Vancouver Book Award, and long-listed for the George Ryga Award for Social Awareness in Literature. Her essays have appeared in multiple Canadian and American literary journals, plus the Globe and Mail, the Walrus, and the Toronto Star. Her work is anthologized in Making Room, Love Me True, Sustenance, The Summer Book, and Black Writers Matter, winner of the 2020 Saskatchewan Book Award. Her poem, “Welwitschia” won the 2020 CV2 Editor's Choice award. She was shortlisted for PRISM's 2021 short forms contest. Chelene's novel is forthcoming with Book*hug Press in 2022, and her book on Black self-love and joy is forthcoming with HarperCollins Canada in 2023.
 
Knight was the previous managing editor at Room magazine, and the previous festival director for the Growing Room Festival in Vancouver. She is now founder of her own literary studio, Breathing Space Creative through which she’s launched The Forever Writers Club, a membership for writers focused on creative sustainability. Chelene works as a literary agent with the Transatlantic Agency. 

Creative Nonfiction

Sierra Skye Gemma

​Sierra Skye Gemma (she/her) is a queer, disabled writer, currently living as an uninvited guest on the Land of the Lək̓ʷəŋən peoples on Vancouver Island in British Columbia, Canada. Sierra is the recipient of a National Magazine Award for Best New Magazine Writer and a National Newspaper Award for Long Feature. Sierra has been listed in contests with House of Anansi Press, Creative Nonfiction Collective / Humber Literary Review, and Room and has won literary contests sponsored by The New Quarterly, wards, and Rhubarb.

 

Bill MacDonald Prize for Prose (Nonfiction)
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John Elizabeth Stintzi

​John Elizabeth Stintzi is a non-binary writer, artist, and editor who grew up on a cattle farm in northwestern Ontario. Their work has been awarded the 2019 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, The Malahat Review’s 2019 Long Poem Prize, the Sator New Works Award, and has been shortlisted for the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and the Raymond Souster Award. JES is the author of the novels My Volcano (2022) and Vanishing Monuments, as well as the poetry collection Junebat. They are a poetry editor for CV2 as well a writing instructor at the Kansas City Art Institute.