We're excited to announce that Moni Brar is the winner of the 2022 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize! Her poem “Dispossession in Five Acts [or How to Be a Model Minority or Not]” will appear in the Spring 2023 issue of The Fiddlehead.
Moni Brar was born in rural India and raised in northern BC on the land of the Tse’Khene. She is the winner of the 2022 Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Emerging Artist Award and a finalist for the Montreal International Poetry Prize. She believes art contains the possibility of healing.
Congratulations to our 15 finalists!
The forthcoming Winter 2023 issue of The Fiddlehead is now available for pre-order!
The issue will feature the winning story from The Fiddlehead's 2022 Fiction Contest, as well as work from talented writers such as Alice Zorn, Abu Bakr Sadiq, Kate Cayley, Brian Bartlett and many more.
Pre-orders will be in the mail by the end of January. To order your copy click the appropriate link below:
Ellen McGinn lives on Saturna Island with her husband and their dog. A graduate of the University of British Columbia’s MFA programme, she has published a book of poetry, From Dark Horse Road and her essay "Tabernacle" was published in the 2022 creative nonfiction issue of The Fiddlehead. Her plays were produced in the Vancouver and Victoria fringe festivals. Her current play, Antarctica Welcomes International Women’s Year 1975 is in its third draft. One of her favourite things was volunteering with Students On Ice.
John Barton: Gay Canlit Icon
We Are Not Avatars, John Barton. Palimpsest Press, 2019.
When I told a friend I was about to write a review of We Are Not Avatars (Palimpsest Press, 2019), a collection of John Barton’s essays, memoirs, and manifestos, they looked at me quizzically and suggested I’d set myself on an unrealistic challenge, for how can anyone critique an icon? My friend gave me pause because I never considered John Barton to be one.
Poets as Observers of Space and Absence
Quiet Night Think, Gillian Sze. ECW Press, 2022.
I first came to Gillian Sze’s work through her chapbook, Fricatives. Fricatives has lingered in the back of my mind for years, and Sze’s latest collection of poems and essays, Quiet Night Think, will no doubt do the same. Comprised of six personal essays interspersed with poems, Quiet Night Think meditates on poetry and motherhood. Where do these intersect, and where do they diverge?
