Congratulations to the Canadian Literature Essay Prize Recipients

July 14, 2014

(left to right) Donna Chin, Margery Fee, Jamie Paris, Kathryn Grafton, Mike Borkent, Louise Ladouceur
(left to right) Donna Chin, Margery Fee, Jamie Paris, Kathryn Grafton, Mike Borkent, Louise Ladouceur

“The Canadian Literature Essay Prize is awarded annually to the best of the 24 or so articles we publish every year. We hope in this way to signal our eagerness to receive and recognize the best submissions in our field. We know that some readers are graduate students and junior academics looking for the best examples on which to model their own writing, and one goal of this award is to make it clear what our adjudicators (selected from the editorial team and the editorial board) think is the best. We know that to receive such an award from ones peers is always welcome, and we hope that the award will encourage those who win it to continue to produce their best writing.”

—Margery Fee, Editor of Canadian Literature, 2008-2015, and creator of the CanLit Essay Prize

Note: Winners are announced during the ALCQ-ACQL’s annual reception at Congress of The Humanities and Social Sciences.

Winners

2014 Canadian Literature Essay Prize

Winner

  • McKegney, Sam. “‘pain, pleasure, shame. Shame’: Masculine Embodiment, Kinship, and Indigenous Reterritorialization.” Canadian Literature 216 (2013): 12–33.

Honourable Mention

  • Williams, David. “Spectres of Time: Seeing Ghosts in Will Bird’s Memoirs and Abel Gance’s  J’accuse.” Canadian Literature 219 (2013): 113-30.

Shortlist

  • Jamieson, Sara. “‘Surprising Developments’: Midlife in Alice Munro’s Who Do You Think You Are?” Canadian Literature 217 (2013): 54–69.
  • McKegney, Sam. “‘pain, pleasure, shame. Shame’: Masculine Embodiment, Kinship, and Indigenous Reterritorialization.” Canadian Literature 216 (2013): 12–33.
  • Szabo, Lisa. “Adventures in Habitat: An Urban Story.” Canadian Literature 218 (2013): 67–84.
  • Williams, David. “Spectres of Time: Seeing Ghosts in Will Bird’s Memoirs and Abel Gance’sJ’accuse.” Canadian Literature 219 (2013): 113-30.

Judges

  • Shortlist: Linda Morra, Cecily Devereux, Jon Kertzer
  • Longlist: Laura Moss, Deena Rymhs, Patricia Merivale
  • Jury Chair: Linda Morra

2013 Canadian Literature Essay Prize

Canadian Literature is proud to announce the winner of the 2013 Best Essay Prize.

The winner of the Best Essay Prize goes to Thinking Together: A Forum on Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy and Healing by Deanna Reder, Susan Gingell, Allison Hargreaves, Daniel Heath Justice, Kristina Bidwell, and Jo-Ann Episkenew. (#214, Autumn 2012)

Jury Citation: According to one jurist, Thinking Together: A Forum is hands down the most productive and stimulating work. Together the jury argued that the forum does a wonderful job of introducing new topics for consideration as well as troubling the very medium of academic discourse. The forum represents multiple engagements with a chosen book; the format is designed to bring this work into conversation with other scholars of different generations working in related areas. The power of this piece lays not only in its attention to the complexities of Indigenous literature and its affective powers, but also in its polyvocal considerations of the transformative potential of literature and its limits. Awarding the prize to an entire forum is unorthodox but the argument about community discourse in the forum justifies the decision.

Honourable Mention goes to Germaine Warkentin for The Age of Frye: Dissecting the Anatomy of Criticism, 1957–1966. (#214, Autumn 2012)

Jury Citation: This article provides an insightful assessment of the early criticism and reception of Frye’sAnatomy of Criticism. In this elegantly styled paper that captures the tone and attitudes of the intellectual elite, Germaine Warkentin also offers a portal through which to view the period, not simply a re-evaluation of Frye’s accomplishment. It is essential reading for those learning about the history of literary criticism in (and outside of) Canada.

Honourable Mention also goes to I. S. MacLaren for Paul Kane’s Wanderings of an Artist and the Rise of Transcontinental Canadian Nationalism. (#213, Summer 2012)

Jury Citation: Through meticulous, immensely detailed historical scholarship, I. S. MacLaren peels back the contemporary designation of Paul Kane as a founding father of Canadian art to reveal an Irish-born, apolitical artist with American connections rather than the customary portrait of a mid-Victorian gentleman who is the symbol of Canadian nationalism. The article demands a new understanding of Kane and the nationalism that created his misrepresentation in Canadian history.

The editor would like to offer profound thanks to the shortlist jury of David Staines, Linda Morra, and Victoria Kuttainen and to the longlist jury of Ian Rae, Patricia Merivale, Cecily Devereux, Jon Kertzer, and David Williams.

Winner

  • Deanna Reder, Susan Gingell, Allison Hargreaves, Daniel Heath Justice, Kristina Bidwell, and Jo-Ann Episkenew. “Thinking Together: A Forum on Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy and Healing.” Canadian Literature 214 (Autumn 2012): 91-127.

Honourable Mention

  • Germaine Warkentin. “The Age of Frye: Dissecting the Anatomy of Criticism, 1957–1966.” Canadian Literature 214 (Autumn 2012): 15-29.
  • I. S. MacLaren. “Paul Kane’s Wanderings of an Artist and the Rise of Transcontinental Canadian Nationalism.” New Work on Early Canadian Literature. Ed. Janice Fiamengo and Thomas Hodd. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 213 (Summer 2012): 16-38.

Shortlist

  • Richard Brock. “Body/Landscape/Art: Ekphrasis and the North in Jane Urquhart’s The Underpainter.” Canadian Literature 212 (Spring 2012): 11-32.
  • Ana María Fraile-Marcos. Urban Heterotopias and Racialization in Kim Barry Brunhuber’s Kameleon Man. Canadian Literature 214 (Autumn 2012): 68-89.
  • I. S. MacLaren. “Paul Kane’s Wanderings of an Artist and the Rise of Transcontinental Canadian Nationalism.” New Work on Early Canadian Literature. Ed. Janice Fiamengo and Thomas Hodd. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 213 (Summer 2012): 16-38.
  • Deanna Reder, Susan Gingell, Allison Hargreaves, Daniel Heath Justice, Kristina Bidwell, and Jo-Ann Episkenew. “Thinking Together: A Forum on Jo-Ann Episkenew’s Taking Back Our Spirits: Indigenous Literature, Public Policy and Healing.” Canadian Literature 214 (Autumn 2012): 91-127.
  • Germaine Warkentin. “The Age of Frye: Dissecting the Anatomy of Criticism, 1957–1966.” Canadian Literature 214 (Autumn 2012): 15-29.

Judges

  • Shortlist: David Staines, Linda Morra, Victoria Kuttainen
  • Longlist: Ian Rae, Patricia Merivale, Cecily Devereux, Jon Kertzer, David Williams

2012 Canadian Literature Essay Prize

Meredith Quartermain at Canadian Literature's 2012 Woodock Centennial

We are delighted to announce Meredith Quartermain has won this year’s Canadian Literature award for best article with T’ang’s Bathtub: Innovative Work by Four Canadian Poets. Quartermain describes herself as very much a full-time cultural worker. Her novel Rupert’s Land, her fifth book since 2000, is coming out this fall from NeWest Pess and she’s hard at work on another novel. She also runs Nomados Literary Publishers (designing, typesetting and producing chapbooks by other writers) and other cultural activities like the writing women’s network at Rhizome Café in Vancouver.

Judges’ comments on Quartermain:

They found the essay highly ambitious in its engagement with big ideas—the renewal of poetic language and the relationship between poetics and politics—but also hugely attentive to the detail and texture of the poetry and essays considered. The author evolves out of this a very persuasive argument against the idea that poetry must be politically purposeful. At the same time, she acknowledges the power of the language experiments of poets such as Jeff Derksen, Roger Farr, Erín Moure and Lisa Robinson, to begin to undo social controls binding them to social injustice. In sum, the essay was intelligent, convincing, and beautifully written.

Annette Hayward won honorable mention for her essay “Littérature et politique au Québec pendant la première moitié du vingtième siècle.” She is an Emerita Professor of French Studies department at Queen’s University, whose work focuses on Quebec and French-Canadian literature, in particular the institution of literature and writing by women. She is currently doing research on the Anglo-Canadian critical reception of Quebec literature. Her book La querelle du régionalisme au Québec: Vers l’autonomisation de la littérature québécoise (2006) is a pioneering work, based on exhaustive research that still stands as a benchmark of reference. Its publication earned it the Prix Gabrielle-Roy as well as her first Governor General’s Award.

Judges’ comments on Hayward:

It is quite a bold intervention, which sets out a very clear aim for itself and reaches an unambiguous and important conclusion: that there was no incompatibility between literary modernism and the old left in Quebec during the first half of the twentieth century (even though writers’ political orientations were often determined more by their milieu than by their literary tendencies.) This may appear too straightforward and definite a conclusion, but I think it is justified by the extensive evidence which is marshaled in this essay. Each example is outlined with remarkable conciseness and clarity, and Hayward also offers essential background detail on the political and literary history of early twentieth-century Quebec. These short contextual accounts are valuable in themselves—for instance I suspect that Anglophone scholars sometimes lose sight of the fact that a split between regionalists/nationalists and modernists/’exotic’ writers was just as much evident in Quebec as in English Canada. Substantial primary, secondary and archival research has informed this piece.

We thank the judges who assessed a set of four essays nominated by the associate editors from all the articles published in 2011, as well as the ACQL for letting us make the announcement at their annual prize reception.

Winner

  • Meredith Quartermain. “T’ang’s Bathtub: Innovative Work by Four Canadian Poets.”  21st Century Poetics. Ed. Clint Burnham and Christine Stewart. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 210-211 (Autumn/Winter 2011): 116-132.

Honourable Mention

  • Annette Hayward. “Littérature et politique au Québec pendant la première moitié du vingtième siècle: Prolégomènes.” Spectres of Modernism. Ed. Dean Irvine. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 209 (Summer 2011): 68–88.

Shortlist

  • Alan Filewod. “Authorship, Left Modernism and Communist Power in Eight Men Speak.” Canadian Literature 209 (Summer 2011): 11-30.
  • Annette Hayward. “Littérature et politique au Québec pendant la première moitié du vingtième siècle.” Canadian Literature 209 (Summer 2011): 68-88.
  • Karl Jirgens. “Neo-Baroque Configurations in Contemporary Canadian Digital Poetics.” 21st Century Poetics. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 210-211 (Autumn/Winter 2011): 135-151.
  • Meredith Quartermain. “T’ang’s Bathtub: Innovative Work by Four Canadian Poets.”  21st Century Poetics. Ed. Clint Burnham and Christine Stewart. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 210-211 (Autumn/Winter 2011): 116-132.

Judges

  • David Staines, Louise Ladouceur, Faye Hammill
  • Jury Chair: David Staines

2011 Canadian Literature Essay Prize

Winner

  • Eli MacLaren and Josée Vincent. “Book Policies and Copyright in Canada and Quebec: Defending National Cultures.” Canadian Literature 204 (Spring 2010): 63-82.

Honourable Mention

  • Michel Nareau. “La nation à l’épreuve d’un récit métis: Ouvrir le Québec par le biais hispano-américain dans l’oeuvre de Francine Noël.” Canadian Literature 204 (Spring 2010): 27-42.

Shortlist

  • Susan Billingham. “Écriture au Trans-féminine: Trish Salah’s Wanting in Arabic.” Queerly Canadian. Ed. Janice Stewart. Spec. issue of Canadian Literature 205 (Summer 2010): 33-51.
  • Eli MacLaren and Josée Vincent. “Book Policies and Copyright in Canada and Quebec: Defending National Cultures.” Canadian Literature 204 (Spring 2010): 63-82.
  • Michel Nareau. “La nation à l’épreuve d’un récit métis: Ouvrir le Québec par le biais hispano-américain dans l’oeuvre de Francine Noël.” Canadian Literature 204 (Spring 2010): 27-42.
  • Lee Rozelle. “Liminal Ecologies in Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake.” Canadian Literature 206 (Autumn 2010): 61-72.
  • Y-Dang Troeung. “Forgetting Loss in Madeleine Thien’s Certainty.” Canadian Literature 206 (Autumn 2010): 91-108.