Mia Anderson is a writer, a gardener, an Anglican priest, an erstwhile shepherd, long-time actress and a once-familiar voice in CBC radio dramas. Hers is the voice of Atwood’s The Journals of Suzanna Moodie recorded by the CBC. Born and raised in Toronto, where she graduated in English Language and Literature from the University of Toronto, Mia Anderson spent the next 25 years on the stage in the U.K. in London, Edinburgh, and Manchester, and across Canada (including 5 seasons at the Stratford Festival). A national tour of her one-woman show 10 Women, 2 Men and a Moose showcased then-contemporary Canadian writers. She has published four books of poetry: Appetite (Brick, 1988), Château Puits ’81 (Oolichan, 1992), Practising Death (St Thomas’ Poetry, 1997), and most recently The Sunrise Liturgy (Wipf & Stock, 2012). Her Long Poem “The Saugeen Sonata” (in Appetite) won the 1988 Malahat Long Poem Prize and “from The Shambles” won both the 1992 Malahat Long Poem Prize and the National Magazine Award’s Gold for poetry. She has written a short thesis on Margaret Avison: “‘Conversation with the Star Messenger’: An Enquiry into Margaret Avison’s Winter Sun” (Studies in Canadian Literature, 6:1, 1981). As an Anglican priest she served a parish in Québec City, whence she retired to the shores of the St Lawrence with her philosopher-husband Tom Settle.

“What I’m proud of, actually, is Montreal, and Québec my adoptive home, for having created this Prize.  As to winning it, that was a total unhoped-for-unthought-of. I was so glad just to make it into the Global Anthology! But it’s uncanny, the pleasure it gives that the judge seems to have ‘got’ what I was trying to toss aloft. I’m immensely grateful.” - Mia Anderson

Catch Anderson’s CBC Radio interview with Cinq à Six host Jeanette Kelly here.

2013 Prize Judge

2013 Editorial Board

Mary Dalton is the author of four books of poems, most recently Merrybegot and Red Ledger. Merrybegot won the 2005 E.J. Pratt Poetry Award. Red Ledger, named one of The Globe and Mail’s Top 100 Books of the Year in 2006,  was shortlisted for the Atlantic Poetry Prize.  A collection of centos, Hooking, is being published by Vehicule Press in 2013. Dalton is Professor of English at Memorial University of  Newfoundland in St. John’s.

Keki N. Daruwalla has eleven volumes of poetry including Collected Poems (Penguin 2006) and Selected Poems (ARC Publications Todmorden (U.K.)). Landscapes won the 1987 Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia). The Keeper of the Dead won the 1984 Sahitya Academy (National Academy of Letters) Award. He has three collections of short stories and his novel For Pepper and Christ (Penguin) was shortlisted for the Commonwealth Fiction Prize in 2010.  He served as a Special Assistant to the Prime Minister of India in 1979.

Kwame Dawes is the author of over thirty-five books, including sixteen books of poetry, the most recent being, Wheels (Peepal Tree Press 2011).  He is Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner and Chancellor’s Professor of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, and a faculty member of the Pacific MFA program in Oregon. His awards include the Forward Poetry Prize, an Emmy, the Barnes and Nobles Writers for Writers Award, a Pushcart Prize, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. His collection Duppy Conqueror, New and Selected Poems will be published by Copper Canyon in 2013.

Kendel Hippolyte is a Saint Lucian poet, playwright and director and a recently retired lecturer in Literature and Theatre. His poetry has been published in journals and anthologies internationally as well as in six volumes published between 1980 and 2012. He has performed his work in the Caribbean, Europe and America at various literary festivals and book fairs. He has edited anthologies of poetry and also been a judge in literary competitions, most recently the Bocas Festival.

Medbh McGuckian was born in Belfast, Ireland and studied with Seamus Heaney at Queen’s University. Her poem “The Flitting” won the 1979 National Poetry Competition. In 1980 McGuckian won the prestigious Eric Gregory Award. Her first collection The Flower Master (1982) won the Poetry Society’s Alice Hunt Bartlett Prize, the Rooney Prize for Irish Literature, and an award from the Ireland Arts Council. On Ballycastle Beach (1988) won the Cheltenham Award. Her honors also include the Bass Ireland Award for Literature, the Denis Devlin Award, and the American Ireland Fund’s Literary Award. She won the Forward Prize for Best Poem for “She Is in the Past, She Has This Grace.”

Sean O’Brien is a UK poet, critic, broadcaster, anthologist and editor. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Newcastle University and Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. His first six individual poetry collections have all been given awards and the seventh, November, was shortlisted for the 2011 T S Eliot Prize, the Forward Prize, the Costa Poetry Award and the 2012 International Griffin Poetry Prize. His Collected Poems was published in 2012.

Due to unavoidable circumstances, Niyi Osundare is not in a position to fulfill his role as editor this year, but he hopes to participate in the next competition. Taking his place is Michael Harris.

Michael Harris was born in Glasgow, Scotland and grew up in Montreal. Harris has written seven books of poetry, won several prizes, and has been published in leading journals in North America and Europe. He has given over 200 readings throughout Canada and around the world and has translated the complete poetry of Marie-Claire Blais. Harris is also the founding editor of Véhicule Press’s Signal Editions. He has edited over fifty books of poetry by over thirty-five authors. In 1994, he edited The Signal Anthology: Contemporary Canadian Poetry. His most recent book, Circus (2010) was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Award.

Robyn Sarah is the author of nine poetry collections, as well as two collections of short stories and a book of essays on poetry. Her poems have been anthologized in Canada, the United States, and the UK, and have been broadcast on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac and included in his anthology Good Poems for Hard Times. Currently poetry editor for Cormorant Books, she lives in Montreal.

Nicolette Stasko was born in the US of Polish and Hungarian heritage but has lived in Australia since 1979. Her work is widely anthologised and she is well known as an essayist and critic. She is a recipient of the Anne Elder Award for best first collection and has been short-listed for the National Book Awards and the NSW Premier’s Prize. Nicolette has published six volumes of poetry including Glass Cathedrals: New and Selected Poems and most recently a chapbook under rats. She is also the author of the best-selling non-fiction Oyster and a fiction The Invention of Everyday Life. Nicolette is an Honorary Associate at Sydney University where she completed her PhD in English and lectured part-time. She currently lives in Sydney.

Chase Twichell is the winner of the prestigious Kingsley and Kate Tufts Poetry Award (2011) and the Alice Fay Di Castagnola Award (1997). She has received numerous fellowships for her seven books of poetry. She is also the translator, with Tony K. Stewart, of The Lover of God by Rabindranath Tagore, and co-editor of The Practice of Poetry: Writing Exercises from Poets Who Teach.