Yesterday evening, the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers was handed out in Toronto. This year’s winner of the $5,000 prize, which is given in alternating years to fiction and poetry, was 29-year-old Kilby Smith-McGregor for her story “The Bird in Hand.” Smith-McGregor lives in Toronto and is working toward an MFA in creative writing at Guelph University; her work has appeared in Brick, Dublin Quarterly, and The Cyclops Review. (Photos courtesy of the Writers’ Trust of Canada)

Smith-McGregor is flanked by the two other finalists: Claire Tacon (left, who was nominated for “Dumb Dog”) and Shashi Bhat (Indian Cooking”)

Two members of the prize jury: authors Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer (left) and Susan Glickman. The third juror, Trevor Cole, is not pictured

Prize founder Carolyn Smart poses with Writers’ Trust of Canada executive director Don Oravec