Teya
Hollier
Teya Hollier is a graduate of York University’s Creative Writing program where she won the Judith Eve Gewurtz Memorial Poetry Award and the Babs Burggraf Award for Creative Writing. Hollier is a mixed-race Black woman who explores racial oppression, mental illness, and generational trauma through her writing. Her work has appeared in Room Magazine, Verses Magazine, OyeDrum, and Capsule Stories. She has also been nominated for a Pushcart Prize. Hollier lives in Toronto.
Award History
Jury Citation
“A tender, skillful, and moving storytelling achievement, ‘Watching, Waiting’ perfectly captures a child’s voice and understanding of the adult world. The bonds in a delayed father-daughter relationship are so delicately explored that readers are given pause at every cautious movement and each unspoken word. Deftly navigating familial and spatial geographies of shame, solidarity, and race, Teya Hollier moves effortlessly from comparing parents’ skin colour, to secret candy, to the contrasting experiences of zombie and princess trick-or-treaters in a fine form of the unexpected.”
—2022 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award Short Fiction Jury (Erin Frances Fisher, Angélique Lalonde, and Derek Mascarenhas)
