Congratulations to the winners of the 2024 Short Grain Contest! Our 36th annual fiction and poetry contests continue to garner writing from talented writers and poets from across Canada! Look for the six winning pieces in the Fall 2024 issue of Grain, Vol. 52.1. And the winners are,
1st Place, Fiction
Zilla Jones is an African-Canadian woman writing in Treaty 1 Territory (Winnipeg.) In 2024, she was shortlisted in the CBC Fiction Prize and appeared on their list of thirty writers to watch. In 2023, she was a finalist in both the Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and the Writers’ Trust/RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers for short fiction. She has won, placed in contests, and been published by Prairie Fire, Room, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, FreeFall, The ex-Puritan, and Bayou Magazine, and is published in The Fiddlehead. Her debut novel, The World So Wide, and her short story collection, So Much to Tell, will be published in 2025 and 2026 by Cormorant Books.
2nd Place, Fiction
K.R. Byggdin is the author of Wonder World (Enfield & Wizenty, 2022), a ReLit Award finalist and winner of the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Their writing has appeared in journals and anthologies across Canada, the UK, and New Zealand. Born and raised on the prairies, they currently divide their time between Halifax and Toronto as an MFA candidate at the University of Guelph.
3rd Place, Fiction
C. White is a writer of several published short stories in Canadian and American literary publications, including Sycamore Review, The Madison Review, and The New Quarterly. She makes a living as an educator and splits her time between Toronto and Montréal. She is a graduate of the Humber School of Creative Writing, the University of Toronto, and the University of Waterloo.
1st Place, Poetry
Kevin Irie has published poetry in Canada, the US, Australia, and England, and been translated into Spanish, French, and Japanese. He has twice been longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize, nominated for the ReLit Award, and is second runner-up in the The New Quarterly’s 2024 Nick Blatchford Occasional Verse Contest. His book, Viewing Tom Thomson: A Minority Report (Frontenac House, 2012), was a finalist for the Acorn-Plantos Award for People’s Poetry and The Toronto Book Award. The Tantramar Re-Vision (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2021) was picked by the CBC as one of the spring poetry books in 2021. He lives in Toronto.
2nd Place, Poetry
s.j. Shalgaire (she/her) writes from Calgary, Treaty 7 Territory. Poems appear in FreeFall 33, NōD 29, and GUEST 25 (above/ground press, 2023), and in chapbooks inward (Blue Moon Books) and Erotic Mania (100 têtes Press). Sage Hill Writing alumna. Active member of Canty Collective of Writerly Women. She navigates life with whimsy, post-tbi impairments. In process of winding up a prairie storm chapbook. Instagram: @suehunter7080.
3rd Place, Poetry
Megan Morrison is a writer based in Vancouver and on Pender Island, BC. Her work has been published in Front Magazine, produced by the artist-run centre Western Front, and BTWN Magazine. Her poem, “Sorry I Couldn’t Come To Your Baby Shower,” won first place in Room’s 2023 Poetry Contest. Megan’s writing has been generously supported by the Canada Council for the Arts and the 2022 Writers’ Trust Mentorship Program. She is currently completing her first collection of short stories.
