Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers
Winner: $4,000; Finalists: $250
Sponsored by Robin Pacific
The Dayne Ogilvie Prize is presented annually to an emerging Canadian writer from the LGBTQ community who demonstrates great promise through a body of work of exceptional quality.
2018 Winner
Ben Ladouceur’s first collection of poems, Otter, was selected as a best book of 2015 by the National Post, awarded the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, and nominated for a Lambda Literary Award. He won the 2012 Earle Birney Poetry Prize, which is presented by PRISM International, for his poem “Gran Vals.” Ladouceur is the prose editor for Arc Poetry Magazine and a regular columnist for Open Book. He lives in Ottawa.
Read an excerpt from Ben Ladouceur's Otter. (PDF)
Finalists
Trish Salah is a poet who has authored two collections: Lyric Sexology Vol. 1 and Wanting in Arabic, for which she won a Lambda Literary Award in 2014. Born and raised in Halifax, Salah is currently based in Kingston, Ontario, where she is a professor of gender studies at Queen’s University. Her creative and scholarly work addresses transgender and transsexual politics and experience, diasporic Arab identity and culture, anti-racism, and queer politics.
Joshua Whitehead is an Oji-Cree, Two-Spirit storyteller and academic from Peguis First Nation on Treaty 1 territory in Manitoba. He is working toward a PhD in Indigenous literatures and cultures at the University of Calgary on Treaty 7 territory. In 2016, his poem “mihkokwaniy” won Historica Canada’s Aboriginal Arts and Stories contest. He is the author of the poetry collection Full-Metal Indigiqueer and the novel Jonny Appleseed.
Jury
Ali Blythe was a finalist for the 2017 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers and was nominated for the Dorothy Livesay Prize for his debut poetry collection, Twoism. Blythe completed a residency at the Banff Centre and a writing degree at the University of Victoria, receiving the Candis Graham Writing Scholarship from the Lambda Foundation. He lives in Vancouver where he is the editor-in-chief of The Claremont Review.
Greg Kearney is the author of three books of fiction (Mommy Daddy Baby, Pretty, and The Desperates) and several plays, including Fruits and Crosses, The Betty Dean Fanzine, 555-555-5555, and Cancun. He won the 2012 ReLit Award in the short fiction category and received an honour of distinction for the 2009 Dayne Ogilvie Prize. He is the former resident humor columnist for Xtra! Magazine and lives in Toronto.
Shannon Webb-Campbell is a poet, writer, and critic of mixed Mi’kmaq and settler ancestry. She was the inaugural recipient of Egale Canada’s Out In Print Award for her debut poetry collection, Still No Word. Her writing has appeared in publications including The Globe and Mail, Geist, The Malahat Review, and Room. This spring, her play Only Young was presented in workshop form at LSPU Hall in St. John’s. Webb-Campbell lives in Montreal.
Event Photos
About the Prize
Robin Pacific established the prize in 2007 to honour her late friend, Dayne Ogilvie, who was a respected editor, writer, literary manager, and passionate lover of all the arts. The Dayne Ogilvie Prize rewards LGBTQ writers of any age who are in the developing stages of their career and whose body of work to date demonstrates great potential. Past winners of the prize include Kai Cheng Thom, Amber Dawn, Farzana Doctor, and Zoe Whittall.