Now Open: Tenth Annual Literary Prize
The Puritan is proud to launch our tenth annual literary prize! The 2021 edition of the prize will be judged by FRANCESCA EKWUYASI (Fiction) and JORDAN ABEL (Poetry).
FIRST PRIZE: $1,000
RUNNER UP: $200
ENTRY FEE: $20 (CAD)
DEADLINE: OCTOBER 15, 2021
Prizes will be awarded to the first-place entry and runner up in each category. Selected works will also be published in our Fall 2021 issue. Winners will be announced at the end of November, when we usually celebrate with our annual year-in-review.
Head over to the website to find contest details and enter. Good luck!
For Submitter-Tier Patreon supports, you’ll be able to enter the prize for free—no limit on how many submissions you send. Alternatively, you can also give one free entry in each category to someone else.
Prize 2021 Judges
francesca ekwuyasi is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging.
francesca’s debut novel, Butter Honey Pig Bread, was longlisted for the 2020 Giller Prize and was a finalist for CBC’s 2021 Canada Reads, the 2021 Lambda Literary Award, the 2021 Governor General’s Award, the 2021 ReLit Award, and the 2021 Amazon Canada First Novel Award. Find her writing in Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, The Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, GUTS magazine, The Puritan, Canadian Art, and elsewhere. Her story Ọrun is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize.
Supported through the National Film Board’s (NFB) Film Maker’s Assistance Program (FAP) and the Fabienne Colas Foundation, francesca’s short documentary Black + Belonging has screened in festivals Halifax, Toronto, and Montreal.
Jordan Abel is a Nisga’a writer from Vancouver. He is the author of The Place of Scraps (winner of the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize), Un/inhabited, and Injun (winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize). Abel’s latest project NISHGA (forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart in 2021) is a deeply personal and autobiographical book that attempts to address the complications of contemporary Indigenous existence and the often invisible intergenerational impact of residential schools. Abel’s work has recently been anthologized in The New Concrete: Visual Poetry in the 21st Century (Hayward), The Next Wave: An Anthology of 21st Century Canadian Poetry (Anstruther), Best Canadian Poetry (Tightrope), Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within the Anthropocene (Wesleyan), and The Land We Are: Artists and Writers Unsettle the Politics of Reconciliation (ARP). Abel’s work has been published in numerous journals and magazines—including Canadian Literature, The Capilano Review, and Poetry Is Dead—and his visual poetry has been included in exhibitions at the Polygon Gallery, UNITT/PITT Gallery, and the Oslo Pilot Project Room in Oslo, Norway. Abel recently completed a PhD at Simon Fraser University, and is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta where he teaches Indigenous Literatures and Creative Writing.