RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award (original) (raw)
The RBC / PEN Canada New Voices Award is an annual award that aims to encourage new writing and provide a space for unpublished Canadian writers.
The prize is open to all genres of writing: writers can submit short stories, creative nonfiction, journalism, and poetry. Shortlisted submissions are judged by a distinguished jury of Canadian writers.
The RBC Emerging Artists Project provides funding to organizations like PEN Canada to help emerging artists become better established. Deepa Rajagopalan, the 2021 New Voices Award winner, has had her Peacocks of Instagram shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. Jaclyn Desforges, the 2018 winner, published her debut poetry chapbook Hello Nice Man with Anstruther Press in early 2019. Mikko Harvey, winner of the 2017 prize, published Unstable Neighbourhood Rabbit, his first collection of poetry, in 2018. Laura Legge, the 2016 winner, won the PEN International New Voices Award later that year and published her first novel, Cala, in Spring 2019.
The winning entry receives a $3,000 CAD cash prize and year-long mentorship from a renowned Canadian author.
How to submit
Submissions are currently closed. The next call for submissions will open in spring 2025.
2024 winner: Nanc y Huggett
Winning entry: Revelation
Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada). Thanks to the writers who support and inspire her—Firefly Creative, Merritt Writers, Trailheads, not-the-rodeo poets, and Kairos—she has work in American Literary Review, Event, One Art, Pinhole, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly.
Jury Citation
We can see in the confidence of the voice, the experimentation with form and narrative, and the skilful exploration of themes the work of an accomplished poet who understands the craft. A clear cohesion emerges in this epic work, in the interplay of illness and healing, making and breaking (strokes that create paintings and explode brains), and in the delicate engagement with the religious theme implied in the title. We were struck by the work’s powerful emotional resonance and its brave exploration of a felt experience. And we loved the intrusion poems.
In 2024, the jury also named four finalists: Georgio Russell (Saltborne), Hajera Khaja (The Rupture), Monica Nathan (Between Spaces), and Tessa Swackhammer (A Man Called Evergreen).