Rishma Dunlop, associate professor in the Department of English and the Faculty of Education, is a finalist for the 2009 CBC Literary Awards. Dunlop’s “Paris Notebook” is competing in the creative non-fiction category.

Eighty English-language finalists were chosen out of 6,000 submissions in three categories – creative non-fiction, poetry and short story. The winner in each category will receive $6,000, while the second prize winner will receive $4,000.

Dunlop, the 2009 recipient of a Canada-US Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in Creative Writing, is the author of four books of poetry: White Album (Inanna Publications, 2008), Metropolis (Mansfield Press, 2005), Reading Like a Girl (Black Moss Press, 2004) and The Body of My Garden (Mansfield Press, 2002).

She received the 2003 Emily Dickinson Prize for Poetry and her radio drama, “The Raj Kumari’s Lullaby”, was produced by CBC Radio in 2005. Her poems have appeared in anthologies and journals, including Blackbird, the Literary Review of Canada, CV2, Canadian Literature, Descant, Event, Grain and The Comstock Review.

Three York alumni – Michael Blouin (BFA  Spec. Hons. ’84), John Blair (BA Comb. Hons. ’88) and Jennifer Derkitt (BFA Hons. ’91) – were also short listed.

Awards host Shelagh Rogers will unveil the English-language winners chosen from the finalists Thursday, March 18, at 11am on CBC Radio One’s show "Q" with Jian Ghomeshi. Christiane Charette will announce the French-language winners that same day on La Première Chaîne de Radio-Canada.

Interviews with the winners will air on a special broadcast of "The Next Chapter", hosted by Shelagh Rogers Monday, March 22, at 1pm. The winning works will be published in Air Canada's enRoute magazine and read on CBC Radio’s "Between the Covers" from April 12 to 16. They will also be available as a podcast on iTunes, the CBC Podcasts page or CBC Books page as of April 14.

For more information, visit the CBC Literary Awards Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile – York University’s daily e-bulletin.