2023 Contest Winners
MRB Poetry Award Contest
Judged by Bertrand Bickersteth
First Prize:
John O’Neill
Elmwood, ON"The News"
When we heard the news Russia had invaded Ukraine My wife ate the radio. She Ate the television, her iPad and iPhone In short order. She did not bloat, however Or become irregular But, in fact More streamlined, Glass-hard, stiff-furred Lynx-like in the transition. … For full poem, check out our summer 2024 issue coming ...
Russia had invaded Ukraine
My wife ate the radio. She
Ate the television, her iPad and iPhone
In short order.
She did not bloat, however
Or become irregular
But, in fact
More streamlined,
Glass-hard, stiff-furred
Lynx-like in the transition. …
For full poem, check out our summer 2024 issue coming out in July 2024!
John O’Neill is the author of the story collection Goth Girls of Banff (NeWest Press, 2020) which was shortlisted for the ReLit Award in the Short Fiction Category and a Finalist for Trade Fiction Book of the Year at the 2021 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. His work has appeared most recently in The New Quarterly and The Dalhousie Review. John lives and writes in the small community of Elmwood, Ontario.
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Second Prize:
Kerry Ryan
Winnipeg, MB"54th Parallel, Early July"
I nose the blue kayak loonward and she beaks away. Dive Rise Dive I’m grateful for loons, open-throated tremolo. For pearled droplets sliding off paddle, sun overhead nudging midnight. Every delicate bubble. For full poem, check out our summer issue coming out in July 2024!
and she beaks away.
Dive
Rise
Dive
I’m grateful for loons, open-throated
tremolo. For pearled droplets
sliding off paddle, sun overhead
nudging midnight.
Every delicate bubble.
For full poem, check out our summer issue coming out in July 2024!
Kerry Ryan has published three collections of poetry, most recently Diagnosing Minor Illness in Children (Frontenac House, 2023), an unflinching exploration of motherhood and midlife. She has previously received honourable mentions in Prairie Fire’s poetry contest, as well as second place in its creative non-fiction contest. Her poems and essays have appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada. In 2022, her poem “Grief White” was shortlisted for the CBC poetry prize. She lives and writes in Winnipeg.
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Third Prize:
Y. S. Lee
Kingston, ON"Admission"
My mother has begun to talk about her father, who died when she was 13 My father’s family was so poor they didn’t eat lunch Secrets draped in sheets, sealed in the remotest rooms of a museum In the afternoon, his mother told him to stand in the yard and clean his teeth with a ...
her father, who died when she was 13
My father’s family was so poor
they didn’t eat lunch
Secrets draped in sheets, sealed
in the remotest rooms of a museum
In the afternoon, his mother told him
to stand in the yard and clean his teeth
with a toothpick
so obscure I once found a photo
and asked, Is this…?
so the neighbours would think
they’d just eaten
For full poem, check out our summer 2023 issue coming out in July 2023!
Y. S. Lee is an emerging poet whose first chapbook, Exit Permit, was published last year by Anstruther Press. One of her poems won CV2’s 2022 Foster Poetry Prize, a lyric essay was shortlisted for the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize, and her fiction includes the award-winning YA mystery series The Agency (Candlewick Press).
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MRB Fiction Contest
Judged by Conor Kerr
First Prize:
Morgan Christie
Ottawa, ON"Pride Rock"
Mom’s cornmeal porridge was just the way I liked it, but even that couldn’t fill the pit in my stomach. Ginga held onto me so tight the morning before the trip, I wondered if she thought she’d never see me again. Mom was strangely talkative, not that she’s so quiet, but anything that could be ...
Liam and I met when I first moved here eight years ago, I was six. Mom sent for me once she’d found work and a place to stay. Our apartment on Black Creek. We were the same age, but Liam’s always been smaller. He’s smaller than almost everyone. People used to push him around because of it, and he was too nice or scared or unsure to push back. But when I came, I pushed for him, well, actually, I punched. We weren’t friends yet, but my Dad always told me there was only one person worse than a bully; whoever stood by and did nothing about them. I looked out for Liam and he looked out for me, the new kid with words that didn’t speak quite the same, even though they were. We’ve been best friends since.
Check out the full story in our summer issue, out in July 2024!
Morgan Christie's work has appeared in Room, Callaloo, Hawai'i Review, PRISM international, Sport Literate, and elsewhere. She is the author of five chapbooks and her short story collection These Bodies (Tolsun Books, 2020) was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award in fiction. She was the recipient of the 2022 Arc Poetry Poem of the Year Award and her essay collection, Boolean Logic was awarded the Howling Bird Book Prize (2023).
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Second Prize:
Traci Skuce
Courtenay, BC"Atmospheric River"
Rain for days. Weeks. One atmospheric river after another. Inside a basement apartment, and out of the unrelenting rain, houseplants were light starved. Thirsty. A twenty-year-old spider plant had shriveled and resembled a parched wig. A woman bowed over it, pinched off the dead baby spiders and rubbed them to dust, sprinkled the dust over ...
Inside a basement apartment, and out of the unrelenting rain, houseplants were light starved. Thirsty. A twenty-year-old spider plant had shriveled and resembled a parched wig. A woman bowed over it, pinched off the dead baby spiders and rubbed them to dust, sprinkled the dust over the mother plant. Then she wiped her hands on her jeans and plunked herself into a folding chair.
Her phone, stationed on a tiny white table in front of her, illuminated. A text bubble with the name Anton. Still meeting at 1? The woman punched in her passcode and countered with a thumbs-up emoji. Then she downloaded the Tinder app. Poked her dormant profile and hovered over the bio which was written like a list poem: Tree hugger. Story writer. Ecstatic dancer.
She added: Basement dweller.
Deleted it.
The furnace in the closet behind her rumbled and roared like a dragon. Added to the thumping footfalls overhead. A slap dash of rain on the window.
She enabled her profile and hit the flame icon. Grainy selfie of a white, middle-aged man in a bathroom mirror. She swiped left. Next one holding a fish. Left. An indiscernible goggled face on a mountain peak. She hesitated. Scrolled down. Fun loving guy, it said.
Left.
Check out the full story in our summer issue, out in July 2024!
Traci Skuce lives, writes, and swims on the traditional and unceded territories of the Sahtloot, Sasitla, Ieeksun and Puntledge peoples. Her work has appeared in several literary journals throughout North America. In April 2020, her short story collection, Hunger Moon, was released by NeWest Press and was a finalist for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. She is currently working on a novel that examines relationships in this time of climate crisis.
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Third Prize:
Su Chang
Toronto, ON"On The Run"
While waiting by the luggage carousel with Joe at Toronto Pearson, I spotted Sean coming out of the men’s room dressed like an undertaker. It was near the end of the pandemic; no one would bat an eye seeing a traveller clad head to toe in black, his low baseball bill, sunglasses, and N95 casting ...
“Delayed again, damn Air Canada,” Joe mumbled beside me.
I took my eyes off Sean and glanced at my husband of ten years.
Why him?
The question lit up my tired brain, as it did a dozen times during our trip to Cape Breton, and if I was honest with myself, long before the trip. I always knew it had to be a white man, with my immigrant’s loneliness and insecurities, the ceaseless frustration standing on the sidelines of a tantalizing Western culture that had felt impenetrable. But why this one? Just because he was the first to say yes? Was it for his charming lopsided smile and boyish looks, despite being fifteen years older? Or the age gap that had kept my inferiority complex at bay? The question tormented me as I sat glumly in our parked car at the many gas stations across the East Coast, while Joe snored in the driver’s seat. It’d resurface whenever he insisted on his chicken dinners, in a seaside town that prided itself on its abundant supply of fresh lobsters.
Check out the full story in our summer issue, out in July 2024!
Su Chang is a fiction writer with a debut novel "The Trouble with Leaving" forthcoming from House of Anansi in early 2025. An earlier draft was long-listed for the Maters Review's Novel Excerpt Contest, and a semifinalist at SheWritesPress' STEP Prize. Her plays have won several prizes and read/performed at the Hamilton Fringe, Ergo Pink Fest, FemFest, InspiraTo, Toronto's New Ideas Festival, etc. Su holds a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing (with Distinction) from Humber School for Writers.
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MRB CREATIVE NON-FICTION CONTEST
Judged by Jeanette Lynes
First Prize:
Basma Kavanagh
Canning, NS"An Elegy with an Ode at Its Centre: Poets, Planarians, & the Practice of Attention"
Two worlds touch where the spring surfaces. One, the green world inhabited by humans, washed by sun and moonlight, alive with sound and scent, and, beneath our feet, another—an unfathomable place of darkness, where water, minerals, stone, and time contrive the ground we rely on. It’s neither solid nor immutable, but compared to our fleeting ...
Over and over, I return to the spring, trying to see deep into earth through clear water, following the rippling movement back to its source underground. Trying to see beyond sight, I stare at the past—the water and bedrock—hoping to glimpse the future. The futility of this weird endeavour leaves me drained and demoralized. Can’t you just be normal? In another time, it might have been my task to guard this water source, or interpret its movement and moods for others, opening my mouth to let wise moisture pour out in the shape of words. Perhaps the form this task takes in our time is coaxing a story from its trickle.
A new friend, a poet, died last year, as winter shrivelled and spring furtively approached. Before becoming ill, she often sat in the woods, translating the hours into breath-taking work. We conspired through this witchy habit, attuned to our surroundings, to extract potent language from every kernel we unearthed. It takes a combination of patience and tenacity, a nameless hunger for a food few others recognize. When we met, we didn’t talk poetry—we talked owls and flying squirrels, ruby-throated hummingbirds, little brown bats, and fly honeysuckle. Now, nearly two years into the pandemic, I happen upon a chickadee bathing in freshly fallen snow—just as it would in water or dust, something I’ve never witnessed before this moment. I clock the elegant form of each nude tree pressing against voluptuous wintry sky. The whisper and crackle of dried beech leaves and rustling pine needles graze my ears, but there’s no nourishment in any of it. My feet planted on the same mysterious earth, too numb for grief, I forget how to feel.
Check out our summer issue for the full story, out in July 2024!
Basma Kavanagh, a multidisciplinary artist and writer, lives and works in Nova Scotia, in Mi’kma’ki. She produces artist's books, has published three volumes of poetry, and recently completed an MFA in Creative Nonfiction. See more of her work at www.basmakavanagh.ca.
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Second Prize:
Kim Fahner
Sudbury, ON"Before She Went Away "
My mother loved beautiful things: a print of Tom Tomson’s The West Wind that hung in the vestibule of my childhood home; June lilacs in a tall white Wedgwood vase; fancy Limoges china inherited from her dead relatives; and, too, Barbra Streisand songs from Yentl that she would sing along to in the kitchen. She ...
She loved the idea of people, but couldn’t fathom real connection, scowling if surprised by unannounced visitors, or shaking her head if she was even more annoyed. She worried too much about appearances, from the outside in, and about creating the illusion (for others) that all was well. On the inside, our world was built to be oppressive, cloistered, claustrophobic, and narrowed by blinders.
My mother had beautiful hands, long fingers to play piano with, and they danced in the air in front of her as she spoke. Her voice was musical, cadences like song. Ottawa Valley inherited, her voice.
Her voice like song, and mine in a similar lilting fashion, but neither of us learning to speak up for ourselves.
*
Listen. Bad news takes extra effort. Your ears won’t want to hear.
Vascular surgeons have blank faces without features. They bear bad news, so I erase their outlines in my mind’s eye. No nose, mouth, eyes. Faces eliminated.
For full story, check out our summer issue, out in July, 2024!
Kim Fahner lives and writes in Sudbury, Ontario. Her most recent books of poetry include Emptying the Ocean (Frontenac House, 2022) as well as a chapbook, Fault Lines and Shatter Cones (Emergency Flash Mob Press, 2023). Kim is the First Vice-Chair of The Writers' Union of Canada (2023-25), a member of The League of Canadian Poets, and a supporting member of the Playwrights Guild of Canada. Her first novel, "The Donoghue Girl", will be published in Fall 2024 by Latitude 46. Kim may be reached via her author website at www.kimfahner.com
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Third Prize:
Trisha Cull
Victoria, BC"Me, You and Oogie Boogie"
Chris and I are standing in the vacuum cleaner aisle at Walmart, surveying Hoovers, checking prices. The debate: do we buy a shitty vacuum cleaner for less that will probably conk out in a year or two a week after the warranty expires (it’s like they know), or do we bite the proverbial bullet and ...
It’s October, and the store is crammed full of Halloween candy. I smell sweetness in the air, stale cheap chocolate. A day or so after Halloween the store will be decorated for Christmas, and the aisles will be filled with novelty gifts and stocking stuffers.
“How much is this one?” I say. There appears to be no price listed below it, the most promising Hoover of them all, but then I see the sticker tag curled over the bottom rim of the metal shelf upon which the Hoover sits, beckoning to us. “Oh, it’s down there,” I say, leaning over to see, but my back is killing me, and my knees are shot from years of epic distance running, all to be thin, to be pretty, to look great in crop tops I never had the courage to wear, to fit into small and defined spaces while my marriage to an abusive man was falling apart.
“I don’t see it,” Chris says, but he gets down on his knees onto the white linoleum floor and peers hard at the bottom rim of the shelf upon which the Hoover sits. “Oh, there it is,” he says. “It’s $160.”
“Holy shit.”
This is our plight, two lovers standing in the vacuum cleaner aisle at Walmart while fluorescent lights burn into our weary middle-age psyches.
Chris rises to his feet, dusts off his Levis and sort of pulls them up higher around his waist. I’m briefly distracted from the Hoover and its menacing sticker price. Something in the way he dusted off his jeans, but I want him, right then and there in aisle 26.
For full story, check out our summer issue, out in July, 2024!
Trisha Cull is the the author of the memoir, The Death of Small Creatures (Nightwood Editions, 2015). She has a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of British Columbia, and recently graduated from the Interprofessional Mental Health & Addictions post-graduate program at Camosun College. Trisha has won both the Prism International prize for literary nonfiction, as well as the Prairie Fire Bliss Carmen Award for poetry. Her future endeavors include writing, working to combat stigma, and giving voice to mental illness and addiction. She is a proud patron of a direct no-nonsense cat named, Thor, and she lives, writes and wanders in Victoria, BC.
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