Welcome

2010 President's Prize Winners

Screenplay

Katie Alguire for "Jason's Dad, Brama"

citation: A simple, but moving story about a family in crisis. A teenage boy's love for his deceased father is challenged when he chances upon an email sent by a stranger. The boy learns that truth is often not what we were looking for.

Stageplay

Robbie Woods for "Crab Apples"

citation: Four women are seated in a waiting room, wearing the numbers 1 to 4 indicating their wait order. As it becomes clear they are at an abortion clinic, a fraught situation emerges with sharply differentiated characters revealing themselves in spare, matter-of-fact, yet eloquent dialogue. Each in her own way is tense, anxious, ambivalent about being there. Painful predicaments are declared, choices are made. The big issues come into view, but not with any fanfare, and are dropped again, unresolved. A lean and moving slice of life, compellingly rendered.

Short Fiction

Alison Jane Gadsby for "Payment for the Ride"

citation: A compelling story with taut prose that evokes a range of emotional tones, "Payment for the Ride" takes us into the life and mind of a woman perpetually at odds with her life, as she picks up a young hitchiker and takes him where only she understands he doesn't want to go.

Poetry

Kevin Ferris for "The Schofield-Kaala"

citation: The judges were extremely impressed with this year's powerful winning poem, "The Schofield-Kaala," an ambitious long poem told from the point of view of a survivor of an ammunition accident during a brutally challenging hike in Hawaii. The poet displayed verbal agility with consistency of tone and voice, drawing the reader into this sometimes flippant, sometimes mournful, sometimes terrible narrative of dashed expectations and deathly consequences.

Honourable Mentions

"Live in Norway, 1966, Thelonious Monk," by Shaun Hogan, and "Frog with Buddha-Nature," by Michael Earnshaw, also impressed the judges with their sophistication, grace, precise details; and the buoyant energy of the former and the intelligent humour of the latter.