Established in 1993 in honour of the Union’s 20th anniversary, the Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers aims to discover, encourage, and promote new writers of short prose in order to provide opportunity and exposure to developing writers. 

Winner Announced

The Writers’ Union of Canada is thrilled to announce that Imaan Umar has won the $2,500 prize for its 32nd annual Short Prose Competition for Emerging Writers, for the best story under 2,500 words, with her piece “First Ouroboros.” The Union will submit the winning story and the eleven other shortlisted stories to three Canadian magazine publishers for their consideration.

The jury noted that “First Ouroboros” is intimate and surprising, and a deeply affecting work of fiction. Despite familial, cultural, societal, and even ancestral expectations, a woman follows the courage of her convictions to make an irrevocable choice. Through elegant and richly detailed language, the story dramatizes the necessity — and the cost — of personal agency.

Finalists

This year, 30 Union members donated their time and expertise to read 599 submissions and distill them into a long list of 142 stories. These stories went on to a second round of 29 readers who selected the finalists to pass on to the jury: 

“Kimberlite,” Courtney Bill, Victoria, BC 
“Underwear,” Carolyn Chung, Toronto, ON 
“Say Thank You/Thuh-n-uh to Your Camel,” Carmen Farrell, North Vancouver, BC 
“How To Build A Bomb,” Lindsay Foran, Ottawa, ON 
“Insignificant Other,” Ireh Iyioha, Victoria, BC 
“Call it a Night,” John Brad MacDonald, Montreal, QC 
“FRY,” Fareh Malik, Whitby, ON 
“Yew Tree,” Evan Manning, Toronto, ON 
“All the Ways We Save Each Other,” Dawn Miller, Picton, ON 
“Homework,” Aaron Rabinowitz, Bowen Island, BC 
“Tour de Force,” Catherine St. Denis, Victoria, BC

PRESS RELEASE

Eligibility

1) Original, unpublished fiction or nonfiction up to 2,500 words in the English language.
2) Writers who have had no more than one book published (traditionally or self-published) in any genre and who are not currently under contract for a second book.
3) Writers not published in book format are also eligible.
4) Writers must be Canadian citizens or permanent residents of Canada.
5) Co-authored pieces are ineligible.

How to Submit

1) Entries should by typed, double-spaced, in a clear twelve-point font, and the pages numbered on 8.5" x 11" pages, saved as either a Word document or PDF.
2) This competition is judged anonymously. Ensure your entry does not include your name or other identifying information (other than the title).
3) Payment will be made online on Submittable when uploading your entry. Multiple entries are accepted, $29 per entry.
4) Payment may be made through PayPal or by credit card (VISA, MasterCard, or American Express).
5) Entries must be received electronically.

About the Jury

This year’s jury comprises authors Lisa Bird-Wilson, Dr. Jenna Butler, and Jack Wang.

Lisa Bird-Wilson is a Saskatchewan Métis and Cree writer whose most recent book, Probably Ruby (2021), is published internationally and was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, for the Amazon First Novel Award, and won two Saskatchewan Book Awards including Book of the Year. Lisa is a founding member and chair of the Saskatchewan Aboriginal Writers Circle Inc (SAWCI)/Ânskohk Indigenous Literature Festival. She lives in Saskatoon.

Dr. Jenna Butler (she/her) is an award-winning poet, essayist, teacher, and editor. She is the author of three books of poetry, an Arctic travelogue, and two collections of ecological essays. Her book Revery: A Year of Bees, essays about beekeeping, climate grief, and trauma recovery, was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Award in Non-Fiction and a longlisted title for CBC Canada Reads 2023. A retired professor of creative and environmental writing, Butler holds fellowships in environmental writing from the Spring Creek Project and Oregon Wild, the Yaddo Foundation, and Studio Faire. She works on the land between the off-grid organic farm she collaboratively runs in northern Treaty 6, Alberta, and the unceded traditional territories of the lək̓ʷəŋən and W̱SÁNEĆ peoples of southern Vancouver Island.

Jack Wang the author of We Two Alone, winner of 2020 Danuta Gleed Literary Award from The Writers’ Union of Canada for best debut collection in English, shortlisted for the 2021 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and longlisted for Canada Reads 2022. His fiction has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and longlisted for the Journey Prize. His forthcoming novel, The Riveter, received an Artist Fellowship in Fiction from the New York Foundation for the Arts and a Research and Creation Grant from the Canada Council for the Arts. He holds a BSc from the University of Toronto, an MFA in fiction from the University of Arizona, and a PhD in English from Florida State University. In 2014–15, he held the David T. K. Wong Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia in Norwich, England, and in 2022, he served as a writer-in-residence at Historic Joy Kogawa House in Vancouver. He is a professor in the Department of Writing at Ithaca College. Originally from Vancouver, he lives in Ithaca, New York, with his wife and their two daughters.

Short Prose Competition Winners