The Writers' Union of Canada is pleased to announce the short list of nominees for the 27th annual Danuta Gleed Literary Award. The Award recognizes the best first collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2023 in the English language. The Award consists of cash prizes for the three best first collections, with a first prize of $10,000 and two additional prizes of $1,000 each.
The jury this year comprised authors Danila Botha, paulo da costa, and Souvankham Thammavongsa, who determined the short list from 28 collections submitted, some by seasoned writers, others by authors being published for the first time. Those finalists are:
Lisa Alward, Cocktail (Biblioasis)
Paola Ferrante, Her Body Among Animals (Book*hug Press)
Rebecca Hirsch Garcia, The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories (ECW Press)
Kathryn Mockler, Anecdotes (Book*hug Press)
Idman Nur Omar, The Private Apartments (House of Anansi Press)
The winners will be announced on June 11th at noon EDT on Facebook Live on The Writers’ Union of Canada’s page.
The Award was created as a celebration of the life of Danuta Gleed, a writer whose short fiction won several awards before her death in December 1996. Danuta Gleed’s first collection of short fiction, One of the Chosen, was posthumously published by BuschekBooks. The Award is made possible through a generous donation from John Gleed, in memory of his late wife, and is administered by The Writers’ Union of Canada.
Jury Comments on the Finalists for the 2023 Danuta Gleed Literary Award
Lisa Alward, Cocktail (Biblioasis)
Lisa Alward’s Cocktail is skilful in its ability to capture the nuance and details of daily life in a way that is striking and deeply felt. With beautiful, precise descriptions and expert pacing, she effortlessly reveals tensions that feel both classic and utterly her own. Exploring the emotional and sexual tensions of couples and families in the Sixties and Seventies, these narratives bring the reader to the core of those unspoken moments, leaving us unsettled. The clarity of sound in Lisa Alward's sentences — word after word after word — makes it impossible to turn your ear away. This is a quiet voice that booms.
Paola Ferrante, Her Body Among Animals (Book*hug Press)
Paola Ferrante's Her Body Among Animals shows us a writer with a gift for detail. These stories are sharply observed, drawing in magic where the ordinary touches. Her encyclopedic knowledge of animal and insect facts are seamlessly knitted into her stories and the way she uses them to embody her characters, from an albatross thrashing its wings against the glass in a Nanaimo emergency room, to a spider whose need to be herself alienates her from her partner. With sharp but touching insights into mental health struggles, fraught relationships, breakups and identity, Her Body Among Animals is poignant and affecting. Her sentences strike, hiss, and knock you back — leaving you grateful to be here at all.
Rebecca Hirsch Garcia, The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories (ECW Press)
Rebecca Hirsch Garcia’s The Girl Who Cried Diamonds & Other Stories is a dazzling and original collection that contains an admirable combination of grittiness and the wild, yet somehow always grounding the imagination. Like the love child of Heather O’Neill, Mariana Enriquez, and Carmen Maria Machado, Hirsch Garcia is particularly skilled with extending a metaphor in a way that feels so natural that the reader never consciously has to suspend their disbelief. From a mother and wife who feels so confined by her existence that she becomes a cloud, to a couple who transform into wolves when they fight, to a woman whose every encounter with her partner is ephemeral and painfully short lived, to a girl whose bodily fluids turn into jewels; each story is a revelation, full of profundity and insight.
Kathryn Mockler, Anecdotes (Book*hug Press)
Innovative and risk-taking, Kathryn Mockler’s Anecdotes is a kaleidoscopic exploration of the possibilities of short fiction. From meta-fiction to flash, from one-liners to anecdotes, this book is bold and disruptive. Anecdotes engages with the challenges found in our unprecedented times of environmental collapse by subverting and rattling us out of our apathetic responses and conventional narratives. Its dark humour and absurdism will stay with the reader.
Idman Nur Omar, The Private Apartments (House of Anansi Press)
Idman Nur Omar’s The Private Apartments is a masterfully crafted, deeply moving collection about the lives of Somali immigrants that spans almost thirty years, from 1991, the start of the Somali civil war, to the pandemic in 2020. The stories range in location from Italy and the UK to Dubai and Ontario, among others. Idman Nur Omar’s deliberate succinctness and emotionally acute phrasing reveal a fearlessness when it comes to naming precisely where the tensions and issues lie. Omar’s settings and descriptions are evocative and her characterization is complex, sensitive and thoughtful. The collection’s final story, “Toronto 2020,” set in Lawrence Heights, is particularly gripping in its descriptions of contemporary Toronto, of a deeply connected community and its challenges, and an ending that blurs the edge of reality and could bring any reader to tears.
The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) is the national organization of professionally published writers. TWUC was founded in 1973 to work with governments, publishers, booksellers, and readers to improve the conditions of Canadian writers. Now over 2,800 members strong, TWUC advocates on behalf of writers’ collective interests, and delivers value to members through advocacy, community, and information. TWUC believes in a thriving, diverse Canadian culture that values and supports writers.
– 30 –
For additional information:
John Degen, Chief Executive Officer
The Writers’ Union of Canada
jdegen@writersunion.ca
DATE: April 24, 2024
