non-fiction

The Fiddlehead is excited to announce the finalists of our 2021 Creative Nonfiction Contest, judged by Chelene Knight! The winner of the $2000 contest prize will be announced on October 1 and the winning essay will appear in the Autumn 2021 issue (289). Thank you to all who entered and congratulations to the following fifteen finalists!

Nadja Lubiw-Hazard is a writer and a veterinarian. She is the author of the novel The Nap-Away Motel. Her work has appeared in The New Quarterly, Room, Canthius, The Dalhousie Review, Understorey, and elsewhere. Nadja lives in Toronto with her wife, their two daughters, a black pug, and an old orange tabby cat. Her story A Good Dog is featured in the new Summer Fiction issue. Order your copy of the issue today! 

Matthew Hooton is the author of the novels Deloume Road and Typhoon Kingdom, and has written fiction and non-fiction for a number of venues internationally. He teaches at the University of Adelaide, where his research ranges from Korean history through Jim Henson's Muppets and the stunts of Evel Knievel. His story Nine Endings was published in the Summer Fiction issue of The Fiddlehead. Order your copy of the issue today!

As we receieve submissions for the upcoming BIPOC Solidarities special issue, we'll be featuring our wonderful team of editors who are working to bring the issue together. 

This special issue is meant as an opening, extending the invitation to BIPOC writers to transform the content and spirit of The Fiddlehead far beyond a single issue; this issue is a commitment to transformation and accountability.

As we receieve submissions for the upcoming BIPOC Solidarities special issue, we'll be featuring our wonderful team of editors who are working to bring the issue together. 

This special issue is meant as an opening, extending the invitation to BIPOC writers to transform the content and spirit of The Fiddlehead far beyond a single issue; this issue is a commitment to transformation and accountability.

Jen Ashburn is the author of the poetry book The Light on the Wall (Main Street Rag, 2016), and has work published in numerous venues, including The Writer’s Almanac, Pedestal and Whiskey Island. Her creative nonfiction essay Borax and Cornmeal was published in issue 286 of The Fiddlehead. She holds an MFA from Chatham University, and lives in Pittsburgh, PA. 

Submissions are now open for our BIPOC Solidarities Special Issue! What conversations would you have in a room filled with fellow BIPOC writers? What stories would you write for one another that you have held back from publishing in a pervasively white literary industry? The Fiddlehead invites submissions of poetry, fiction, creative-nonfiction, and cross-genre innovations by racialized writers residing in the area known as Canada (citizenship not required). This includes writers who identify as Black, Indigenous, people of colour, and racialized writers who wish to push back against the BIPOC acronym.

Rose Maloukis is a poet and visual artist, with a BFA from Wayne State University, Detroit, Michigan. Her poetry was short-listed for the 2015 Montreal International Poetry Prize. She won 2nd place in Geist’s erasure poem competition. Her chapbook, Cloud Game with Plums was published in July 2020 by above/ground press. Her poem These Weeds was featured in issue 286 of The Fiddlehead. 

Anthony Purdy lives on the South Shore of Nova Scotia, where he started writing in 2019. Recent publications include stories in the Spring and Summer 2020 issues of Queen’s Quarterly as well as poems in The Goose, Prairie Fire, The Dalhousie Review, and Queen’s Quarterly. He is a member of the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia and an Associate Member of the League of Canadian Poets. His poem, mornings, received an honourable mention in the League of Canadian Poets’ 2021 Very Short Verse contest and appeared in the May 21 edition of Poetry Pause. His poem, bakery, was shortlisted for the Writers’ Federation of Nova Scotia Spring 2021 Postcard Poem contest. Literary writing offers him new ways of exploring some of the concerns and questions that animated his research and teaching in recent years in fields as various as nephology and meteorology; natural history and the environment; material culture and the museum; cultures of memory and the archive; the archaeological imagination. You can read his poem, The subtle tumour in issue no. 286 of The Fiddlehead.