Casey Plett

Joelle Barron, Lindsay Nixon, and Casey Plett have been shortlisted for the 2019 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ Emerging Writers. The $5,000 prize will be presented by the Writers’ Trust of Canada on June 1 at a ceremony in Halifax as part of The Writers’ Union of Canada’s writer conference OnWords.

The finalists produced work in 2018 that spanned poetry (Barron), memoir (Nixon), and novel-length fiction (Plett). They were chosen by previous winners Amber Dawn (Sub Rosa) and Kai Cheng Thom (Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars: A Dangerous Trans Girl’s Confabulous Memoir). The Dayne Ogilve Prize is presented to new queer writers who show great literary promise.

The shortlisted writers and their work are listed below.

• Ritual Lights, Joelle Barron (Icehouse Poetry/Goose Lane Editions)
• nîtisânak, Lindsay Nixon (Metonymy Press)
• Little Fish, Casey Plett (Arsenal Pulp Press)