2011 English Awards Wrap-Up

Lit Nerds Take Home Books, Cash Prizes, Future Play Performances for Their Hard Work

Fringe ArtsAlex Manley — Published March 29, 2011

On Friday afternoon as the second of two, at times heated, CSU election debates wrapped up in the Hall building, the 2011 Concordia English Awards ceremony passed largely without fanfare on Friday afternoon in LB-636.

Prize juror after prize juror stepped up to the podium in the well-attended conference room, commending the finalists for their hard work and lamenting their inability to award the grand prize to all of those shortlisted—except in one case.

While the head juror for the sixth Concordia Annual 10-Minute Play Contest, English Professor Patrick Leroux, cheerfully awarded the top prize—a staging of the play by Concordia theatre students—to all three finalists, sending Anya Leibovitch, Christopher Olson and Dylan Sargent all home happy, the other prizes, which conferred financial gain as well as fame and prestige, were not as easy to come by.

Kicking off the afternoon, after a brief speech by English Department Chair Jason Camlot thanking and congratulating all involved, was the Irving Layton Award for Fiction.

Since the finalists for the Layton Awards for Fiction and Poetry had already had a reading two weeks earlier, juror Kate Sterns kept her time at the mic short and sweet, quickly summarizing the five stories (by Jaime Bastien, Heather Davidson, Leesa Dean, Skyler Radojkovic, and Gleb Wilson) before calling them all up to receive books hot off Vehicule Press’s presses and awarding Davidson the $500 grand prize for her story “Circus Girls.”

Up next was a trio of essay-based awards: The A.G. Hooper Prize, the MacGuigan Prize and the Compton-Lamb Memorial Scholarship. The first two, each consisting of $200 dollars, go to the best essays submitted about English literature written before and after 1700, respectively, and were awarded to John Casey and Shawn Petsche.

Along with Paula Wilson, Kirsten Shute was a runner-up for the MacGuigan Prize. Shute was also a runner-up for the A.G. Hooper Prize with Veronica Balafi.

Awarding the MacGuigan Prize, juror Mary Esteve got one of the biggest laughs of the afternoon when, stumbling over her words, she admitted to suffering from a case of nerves talking in front of the audience of three dozen or so.

“You’d think I’d never taught a class,” she joked, before deadpanning, “I don’t. I just jury committees.”
Next, Nichola Nixon came forward to present the Compton-Lamb Memorial Scholarship, awarded to a student with both an outstanding essay and an outstanding grade point average, which went to Michelle White, beating out Veronica Balafi, Michael Chaulk and Rebecca Hiscott to the $500 prize.

Capping off the ceremony was Mary di Michele, presenting the Irving Layton Award for
Poetry.
Opting not to call all the finalists up at once, noting that she deplored the “beauty queen” aspect of it, she called them (Nick Comilla, Candice Maddy Fridman and Emma Healey) up one at a time, before awarding the day’s final prize and a $500 dollar cheque to Jason Freure for his poem “St. Laurent Boulevard.”

The multi-segmented poem was praised for its classical allusions and its length, although di Michele offered some crucial insight into the judging process, admitting, “I think long poems have a bit of an unfair advantage, to be honest.”

Aspiring poets, take note…
An excerpt of Jason Freure’s poem appeared in last week’s issue of The Link and can be read on our website in the Literary Arts section. An excerpt of Heather Davidson’s story appears below

This article originally appeared in Volume 31, Issue 28, published March 29, 2011.