Jury Announced and Call for Submissions Issued for the 19th Annual Danuta Gleed Literary Award

Author
The Writers' Union of Canada
Type
Press Release
Body
The Writers’ Union of Canada and the Gleed family are pleased to announce the jury for the $10,000 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, Canada’s pre-eminent award for the best first Canadian collection of short fiction in the English language, now celebrating its 19th year.
 
This year’s jury comprises authors Shauna Singh Baldwin, Barry Dempster, and Dora Dueck.
 
A short list will be announced in early May 2016, with the winner and two finalists being named in June 2016, in conjunction with the Canadian Writers' Summit & The Writers’ Union of Canada’s Annual General Meeting. The winner receives $10,000 and each of the two finalists is awarded $500.
 
To be eligible, books must be first collections of short fiction written by a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and published in Canada in the English language in the 2015 calendar year. The deadline for submissions is February 1, 2016. Eligible titles may be submitted by publishers according to submission guidelines available at www.writersunion.ca/danuta-gleed.
 
ABOUT THE JURY
 
Shauna Singh Baldwin is the award-winning author of three novels: What the Body RemembersThe Tiger Claw and most recently, The Selector of Souls. Her short fiction collections are: English Lessons and Other Stories, and We Are Not in Pakistan. Her awards include The Writers’ Union of Canada prize for short fiction, the CBC Literary Prize, The Friends of American Writers Prize, the Commonwealth Prize for Best Book (Canada-Caribbean), and a shortlisting for the Giller Prize. Her play, We Are So Different Now will premiere in Canada in 2016. Reluctant Rebellionsselected non-fiction will be published in 2016.
 
Barry Dempster was born in Toronto, Ontario. He is the author of two novels, a children's book, two volumes of short stories and fourteen collections of poetry. He has been nominated for the Governor General's Award for literature twice, most recently for The Burning Alphabet(Brick Books) which won the Canadian Authors Association Chalmers Award for poetry. In 2014 he was shortlisted for the Trillium Award for his second novel The Outside World (Pedlar Press). In both 2010 and 2015 he was a finalist for the Ontario Premier's Award of Excellence in the Arts.

Dora Dueck is the author of two novels and a collection of short fiction. Her novel This Hidden Thing was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards. What You Get at Home, a collection of short stories, was shortlisted for two Manitoba Book Awards and won the 2013 High Plains Book Award for Short Stories. She was winner of The Malahat Review’s 2014 novella contest for “Mask.”
 
ABOUT THE AWARD
 
The Danuta Gleed Literary Award was created as a celebration of the life of Danuta Gleed, a writer whose short fiction won several awards before her death in 1996. Danuta Gleed’s first collection of short fiction, One of the Chosen, was posthumously published by BuschekBooks.  The Award is made possible through a generous donation from John Gleed in memory of his late wife, and is administered by The Writers’ Union of Canada.
 
The Award was first given in 1998 for books published in 1997. The 2016 awards ceremony, for books published in 2015, will mark the 19th anniversary of the prize.
 
ABOUT THE WRITERS’ UNION OF CANADA
 
The Writers' Union of Canada is our country's national organization representing professional authors of books. Founded in 1973, the Union is dedicated to fostering writing in Canada, and promoting the rights, freedoms, and economic well-being of all writers. 
 
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For additional information:
Siobhan O’Connor, Associate Director
The Writers’ Union of Canada
416-703-8982 x 222 or
soconnor@writersunion.ca