|
|
 |
|
|
About The Journey Prize Stories 15
Now in its fifteenth year, and given for the third time in association
with the Writers' Trust of Canada as the Writers' Trust of
Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, this $10,000 prize is awarded
annually to a new and developing writer of distinction. The winner of
this year's Journey Prize will be selected from among the twelve stories
included in the fifteenth-anniversary volume of The Journey Prize
Stories, which will be available in stores in October 2003. The winner
will be announced by the Writers' Trust of Canada in Toronto in the
spring of 2004.
This year's three-person jury comprises three acclaimed writers:
Michelle Berry, Timothy Taylor, and Michael Winter.
|
|
The stories included in The Journey Prize Stories 15 are:
"Reaching" by Rosaria Campbell (The Fiddlehead)
"The Lemon Stories" by Hilary Dean (This Magazine)
"Hansel and Gretel" by Dawn Rae Downton (Grain)
"Gay Dwarves of America" by Anne Fleming (The New Quarterly)
"Truth" by Elyse Friedman (The Malahat Review)
"Hush" by Charlotte Gill (Grain)
"My Husband's Jump" by Jessica Grant (The Malahat Review)
"Conversion Classes" by Jacqueline Honnet (filling Station)
"Resurrection" by S.K. Johannesen (Descant)
"Cuckoo" by Avner Mandelman (Parchment)
"Night Finds Us" by Tim Mitchell (Event)
"The Difference Between Me and Goldstein" by Heather O'Neill (Broken Pencil)
|
|
Among the stories this year:
After her Olympic ski-jumper husband lifts off and mysteriously never
comes down, a woman counters the world's doubts with her own leap of
faith. When two urban-planning students start up a "Gay Dwarves of
America" Web site as a practical joke, they are unprepared for what
follows. The persistent late-night cries of a baby in the apartment
below upsets the delicate balance between a chronically anxious wife and
her beleaguered husband. As labour tensions at a meat-processing plant
escalate, a plant veteran grapples with his own regrets, and with the
growing distance between him and his college-bound son. In a story that
skewers the absurdities of dating, a couple on a blind date tell each
other nothing but the truth.
This fifteenth-anniversary edition features comments about the anthology
and what it means from well-known writers whose early work appeared in
the Journey Prize anthology, including David Bergen, Dennis Bock,
Elizabeth Hay, Steven Heighton, Frances Itani, Yann Martel, Eden
Robinson, and Timothy Taylor.
|
Journey Prize Winner Announced
Toronto, Ontario (Thursday, March 4, 2004)
On March 3, 2004, The Writers' Trust of Canada announced the winners of
the third annual Great Literary Awards. Among the eight prestigious
prizes awarded, the $10,000 Writers' Trust of Canada/McClelland &
Stewart Journey Prize was presented to Calgary writer Jessica Grant for
her story "My Husband's Jump," published by Victoria-based The Malahat
Review. In recognition of the vital role literary journals play in
discovering new writers, The Malahat Review receives $2,000.
Of the winning story, jury members Michelle Berry, Timothy Taylor, and
Michael Winter had this to say:
"When the narrator's husband takes his final Olympic ski jump, in the
winning story 'My Husband's Jump' by Jessica Grant, he never lands. This
story suggests to us that the physical and spiritual world may be
brought into occasional and very surprising contact. The husband goes
up, but never comes down, leaving the wife to become a believer and the
believers to cry foul. This often hilarious story struck the jury as
virtually flawless. We agreed that there wasn't a word more or less than
required. Jessica Grant's skilful and playful language gave wings to the
story and carried us away."
Jessica Grant is from St. John's, and now lives in Calgary. She is
currently working on a collection of short stories, to be published by
The Porcupine's Quill in the fall of 2004. "My Husband's Jump" is her
first published story.
The finalists for the Journey Prize are Dawn Rae Downton for "Hansel and
Gretel," and Charlotte Gill for "Hush." Both stories were published by
Saskatoon-based Grain.
Now in its fifteenth year, and given for the third time in association
with The Writers' Trust of Canada as the Writers' Trust of
Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, the prize is awarded annually
to a new and developing writer of distinction for a short story or
excerpt from a fiction work-in-progress published in a Canadian literary
journal. The prize is made possible by James A. Michener's donation of
his Canadian royalty earnings from his 1988 novel, Journey.
The winner of the Journey Prize was selected from a long list of twelve
stories published in the fifteenth-anniversary edition of The Journey
Prize Stories: From the Best of Canada's New Writers.
|
Finalists Selected
Toronto, Ontario (Tuesday, February 3, 2004)
The Writers' Trust of Canada announced today the finalists for the third
annual Great Literary Awards, to be presented on Wednesday, March 3 at
The Arts & Letters Club in Toronto. Among these were the finalists for
the 2003 Journey Prize.
Now in its fifteenth year, and given for the third time in association
with The Writers' Trust of Canada as The Writers' Trust of
Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, the $10,000 prize is awarded
annually to a new and developing writer of distinction for a short story
or excerpt from a fiction work-in-progress published in a Canadian
literary journal in the previous year. The journal that published the
winning entry receives $2,000. McClelland & Stewart annually publishes
The Journey Prize Stories (formerly known as The Journey Prize
Anthology), the contents of which constitute a long list for the prize.
The prize is made possible by James A. Michener's donation of his
Canadian royalty earnings from his 1988 novel, Journey.
The finalists for the 2003 Writers' Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart
Journey Prize are:
Dawn Rae Downton for "Hansel and Gretel"
Published in Grain
A restless teenage girl with dreams of leaving her family discovers
something unexpected about trying to escape her past.
Dawn Rae Downton is an expatriate Newfoundlander who lives on Nova
Scotia's South Shore. Her fiction has appeared in The Fiddlehead, the
Wascana Review, Descant, Pagitica, TickleAce, and Grain. She also writes
non-fiction, and her family memoir about Depression-era Newfoundland,
Seldom, was judged one of the best books of 2002 by the editors of
Amazon.ca. Her second memoir, Diamond, was published in 2003. She
recently completed a novel set in occupied France during the Second
World War, and is working on another set in Vietnam.
Charlotte Gill for "Hush"
Published in Grain
In a darkly comic tale, the persistent late-night crying of a baby in
the apartment below upsets the delicate balance between a chronically
anxious wife and her beleaguered husband.
Charlotte Gill was born in London, England, and raised in the United
States and Canada. She now lives in Vancouver. She is a graduate of the
M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at the University of British
Columbia. Her work has appeared in Event, The Fiddlehead, Grain, Zygote,
and in 01:Best Canadian Stories. Her non-fiction has been broadcast on
CBC Radio. A collection of stories, Zanzibar, is forthcoming from Thomas
Allen in spring 2005.
Jessica Grant for "My Husband's Jump"
Published in The Malahat Review
After her Olympic ski-jumper husband lifts off and mysteriously never
comes down, a woman counters the world's doubts with her own leap of
faith.
Jessica Grant is from St. John's, and now lives in Calgary. She is
currently working on a collection of short stories, to be published by
The Porcupine's Quill in the fall of 2004. "My Husband's Jump" is her
first published story.
The finalists were selected from a long list of twelve stories published
in the fifteenth-anniversary edition of The Journey Prize Stories: From
the Best of Canada's New Writers. The finalists and the stories included
in the anthology were selected by writers Michelle Berry, Timothy
Taylor, and Michael Winter from a pool of eighty-nine stories submitted
by journals from across the country.
|
Keep checking this site for the latest news on the Journey Prize and The
Journey Prize Stories.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
