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Daphne Marlatt receives George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award

Daphne Marlatt has won the 19th annual George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award, which recognizes an outstanding literary career in B.C. The Vancouver Public Library, City of Vancouver, Pacific BookWorld News Society, and The Writers’ Trust of Canada jointly presented Marlatt with the $5,000 prize and an official mayoral proclamation at a ceremony at VPL’s Central Library on Friday.

A poet, essayist, and feminist critic, Marlatt is perhaps best known for poetry collections such as Touch to My Tongue (1984), boundary-crossing lyric novels including Ana Historic (1977) and The Given (2008), her work on pioneering Canadian literary journals TISH and Tessera, and co-editing Opening Doors in Vancouver’s East End: Strathcona, originally published in 1979 and re-released by Harbour Publishing in 2011 as part of Vancouver’s 125 Legacy Books Collection. Marlatt currently lives in Vancouver and acts as co-director of the Banff Writing Studio.

This year’s award ceremony also marked the 100th anniversary of Woodcock’s birth and featured appearances by writers George Fetherling, Jerry Zaslove, Stephen Collis, Wayde Compton, Maria Hindmarch, and Ryan Andrew Murphy.

Past winners of the George Woodcock Lifetime Achievement Award include David Suzuki, Alice Munro, P.K. Page, Barry Broadfoot, bill bissett, and Jane Rule.