2021 Poetry Contest Opens & Judges Announced!

The Fiddlehead's 2021 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Contest is now open for submissions and we're excited to announce that Selina Boan, Matthew Gwathmey and Susan Musgrave are the talented poets who will be judging this year's entries! 

Selina Boan is a white settler-nehiyaw writer living on the traditional, unceded territories of thexʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-waututh), and sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) peoples.

Her debut poetry collection, Undoing Hours, was released this Spring with Nightwood Editions. Her work has been published widely, including The Best Canadian Poetry 2018 and 2020. She has received several honours, including the 2017 National Magazine Award for Poetry, and was a finalist for the 2020 CBC poetry award. She is currently a poetry editor for Rahila’s Ghost Press and is a member of The Growing Room Collective.

Matthew Gwathmey lives in Fredericton, New Brunswick, on Wolastoqey Territory. He studied creative writing at the University of Virginia and is currently working on his PhD at UNB. His first poetry collection, Our Latest in Folktales, was published by Brick Books in the spring of 2019.

Susan Musgrave has published more than 30 books. She has been nominated and won awards for writing in five different categories: poetry, fiction, non-fiction, children’s books, and for her work as an editor. A new book of poetry, Exculpatory Lilies, will be published by McClelland & Stewart in 2022.

She lives on Haida Gwaii, off Canada’s northwest coast, where she owns and manages Copper Beech Guest House, and teaches poetry in UBC’s Optional Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing. She spends part of every year in the west of Ireland.

Check out the contest submission guidelines for more information!

Good luck to all entrants. This year's contest deadline is Wednesday, December 1, 2021 (postmarked for mailed entries and 11:59 pm Atlantic Standard Time for Submittable entries).