PEN Canada is now accepting submissions for the 2024 RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award. The award encourages new writing and provides a space where unpublished writers (age 17 and over) can submit short stories, creative non-fiction, journalism, and poetry.
Eligible writers are invited to submit their work to a jury of distinguished Canadian writers for a chance to win $3,000 CAD and mentorship from an esteemed Canadian author. Submissions can be made up to midnight on May 19, 2024. More details on how to apply can be found here.
We are excited to announce that this year’s New Voices Award will be judged by authors Sharon Bala, Dimitri Nasrallah and Sarmishta Subramanian.
Sharon Bala’s best-selling debut novel, The Boat People, won a Newfoundland & Labrador Book Award and a Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, was short listed for several awards, and is in translation for four languages. She won the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize in 2017. Her short fiction has been published in Best Canadian Stories 2024, The Journey Prize 29, Hazlitt, Grain, PRISM international, The New Quarterly, Maisonneuve, and elsewhere. Sharon is a member of The Port Authority, a St. John’s writing group. Learn more at sharonbala.com.
Dimitri Nasrallah is the author of four novels. His most recent, Hotline, was a national bestseller in both English and French that was nominated for CBC’s Canada Reads, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, a Relit Award for Fiction, and the Prix des Libraires du Québec. He was born in Lebanon in 1977, and moved to Canada in 1988. His previous books include 2018’s The Bleeds, 2011’s Niko, and 2004’s Blackbodying. He lives in Montreal, where he serves as fiction editor for Véhicule Press’ Esplanade Fiction imprint, translates Québécois fiction from French to English, and teaches creative writing at Concordia University.
Sarmishta Subramanian is an editor and writer based in Toronto. She was editor in chief of the Literary Review of Canada and a launch editor of The Walrus, and has worked as a senior-level editor at the National Post, Saturday Night, Maclean’s, and the Toronto Star, among others. Her writing has appeared in some of those publications and elsewhere. She was editor of Best Canadian Essays 2020, from Biblioasis. She hosted and co-produced the podcast The Power of One, and has created award-winning radio documentaries for CBC’s The Sunday Edition.
