The writers, who are the only finalists of African descent, were nominated for their short fiction, Mama’s Lullabies, and Triggered.
By Hope Ibiale
Vincent Anioke, and Zilla Jones have been announced as some of the finalists on the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers list. The writers, who are the only finalists of African descent, were nominated for their short fiction, Mama’s Lullabies and Triggered. Other finalists include Kyo Lee, Zak Jones, Dore Prieto, and Cooper Skjeie.
The RBC Bronwen Wallace Award, sponsored by Writers’ Trust, a charity organisation that supports and celebrates Canadian writers, will announce the winners on the 1st of June, 2023. The winners will be rewarded with a cash prize of $10,000 prizes for their outstanding works of unpublished poetry and short fiction, while the finalists will walk away with $2,500.
Vincent Anioke is a Nigerian-Canadian software engineer and writer. His short stories have appeared in SmokeLong Quarterly, Masters Review, Split Lip Magazine, Carve, and Pithead Chapel. Anioke has also won the Austin Clarke Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for the 2021 Commonwealth Short Story Prize.
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Zilla Jones is an African-Canadian lawyer and writer. She has won The Malahat Review’s Open Season Fiction Award, PRISM International’s Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction, the gritLIT Festival Short Story Award, and many other prizes. Her stories have been published in Prairie Fire, Room, The Puritan, Malahat Review, PRISM International, FreeFall, and The Fiddlehead. She is currently working on her sophomore novel, Blackface.
Established in memory of writer, Bronwen Wallace, this award has a proven track record of helping talented, developing authors get their first book deal. The RBC Bronwen Wallace Emerging Writers Award is committed to supporting the careers and development of emerging Canadian writers through mentorship programs, education, and access and exposure to new audiences. Since its inception, more than 28,000 artists have been supported through this award ceremony.
This year’s judges include Cicely Belle Blain, Shala Joudry, Sue Sinolair, David Huebert, Janice Lynn Mather, and Dimitri Nasrallah.