Congratulations to Sarah Campbell and Heidi Tiedemann!
We are pleased to announce the winners of this year’s Pal Saqi and Catherine B. Fogarty creative writing awards.
The Pal Saqi Award for Fiction supports emerging writers by providing $2000 annually to a Creative Writing Certificate learner with the most outstanding final project.
The $2000 Catherine B. Fogarty Award celebrates excellence in creative non-fiction and aims to inspire emerging writers to share powerful true stories that deepen our understanding of the world around us.
Meet the talented winners of this year’s awards, Sarah Campbell and Heidi Tiedemann Darroch:
Pal Saqi Award for Fiction winner Sarah Campbell is a writer in Waterloo where she also works at Words Worth Books. She has been published in The New Quarterly and The Quarantine Review. Recently she finished her writing certificate at the University of Toronto, School of Continuing Studies. She lives with her husband, their two sons and two dogs and reads all the time.
The connected stories in Campbell’s collection, Time the Adults Did Something, focus on a group of teenage girls in the nineteen-nineties surviving a predatory teacher without the help of the women they should be able to rely on the most. She uses magical realism and humour to explore coming-of-age themes of loneliness and heartache to create a world of loss but also hope and joy.
The award jury shared the following about Time the Adults Did Something: “Sarah Campbell’s connected stories are searing and wise, painfully human and deeply real. With a deft hand and a natural storyteller’s gift, she forces readers to confront the unspoken, the uncomfortable, and the unimaginable. Campbell's audacious use of magic realism and her perfectly timed dark humour mark Time the Adults Did Something as a truly courageous and powerful collection from a writer of exceptional promise.”
Catherine B. Fogarty award winner Heidi Tiedemann Darroch lives on the west coast and has been teaching literature and writing for thirty years. She is happiest in the classroom. Much of her published work has focused on Margaret Atwood and Alice Munro; in her recent writing, she considers how Munro's legacy is evolving in response to revelations about sexual abuse within her family. Her chapters and articles have appeared in several book collections and in Essays on Canadian Writing, Canadian Literature and, way back when, U of T's Varsity newspaper, which let her meet many of the writers she admired.
Jellyfish and Other Creatures That Sting is a set of lyric and critical-creative essays that touch on themes as diverse as intergenerational family trauma and academic bullying in Suzette Mayr's Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall. The focus of these essays is how survivors accommodate ourselves to shame and denial in the wake of interpersonal and institutional betrayals. Jellyfish offer, in this collection, a space of rest and respite--and a reminder of ever-present danger.
The award jury had this to say about Jellyfish and Other Creatures That Sting: “In Jellyfish and Other Creatures that Sting, Heidi Tiedemann Darroch deftly considers all the things that hurt and heal us. She writes with both deep vulnerability and sharp resilience, weaving a set of interconnected narratives that invite readers to examine the breadth of moments that shape a person—some of them dark, yes, but others dazzlingly bright. The result is both moving and compelling, a brave confrontation of a life's trauma and a refusal to let the sting define it.”
We extend our thanks to the juries for their time and thoughtful consideration:
Pal Saqi Award Jury: Grace O’Connell, Assistant Editor, Simon & Schuster Canada; Hazel Millar, Co-publisher, Book*hug Press; and Douglas Richmond, Editorial Director, House of Anansi Press.
Catherine B. Fogarty Award jury: Lauren McKeon, Executive Editor, HarperCollins Canada; David Ross, Editorial Director, Hamish Hamilton Canada; and Jennifer Smith, Acquisitions & Business Development, ECW Press.