Encouraging the future of Canadian literature

“In ‘Psalmody for the Estranged,’ Renato Gandia reminds us of the affinity between prayer and poetry. These poems appeal to our basic needs to belong, to experience awe, to be seen, and to be accepted. They are alchemical and spellbinding in the way they transform small, quiet moments — a turn of phrase, a partner’s touch, familiar objects, a domestic routine — into moments of sacred encounter. The understated nature of Gandia’s poems is what lets them shine. We are immersed in a world resonant with devotion and reverence for the everyday. Gandia achieves the ancient task set out for a poet: to reveal the profound in the seemingly ordinary and to bring our ear closer to what resonates with meaning.”—2026 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers Poetry Jury (Jeff Latosik, Zehra Naqvi, Chuqiao Yang) 

“‘The Perfect Home for Your Child’ brings equal measures of acuity and empathy to its story of a would-be adoptive couple as they wait for a prospective birth mother to decide if she will keep her child. With an exquisite breathlessness mirroring the couple’s nerve-racked hopes, Graham Slaughter offers an intimate perspective on byzantine regulations, daunting financial barriers, and the complicated bonds between strangers amid emotional tumult. Taut, heartbreaking, and hopeful, it’s a story in which the family’s future is less a branching tree than a garden of forking paths.”—2026 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers Creative Nonfiction Jury (Alison Calder, Robert McGill, Padma Viswanathan) 

“Just as a bumblebee seems to defy the laws of physics every time it takes flight, so too does Julia Cottrelle’s quietly devastating story ‘The Old Turtle Climb’ carry such emotional and thematic weight as to risk failure, which is the mark of true artistry. Through assured and coolly intelligent prose, Cottrelle explores a mother’s raw grief at the loss of stillborn baby, intertwined with images of animal birth and death that are at turns clinical, heartbreaking, and bleakly funny — and often all at once. This is a haunting and authentic depiction of a wounded soul attempting to live through a deep hurt.”—2026 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers Short Fiction Jury (Jamaluddin Aram, Jen Neale, Nathan Whitlock)