The Fiddlehead‘s 2022 Ralph Gustafson Poetry Contest is now open for submissions and we’re excited to announce that Dominique Bechard, shalan joudry, and Michael Prior are the talented poets who will be judging this year’s entries!
Dominique Béchard is the author of the poetry collection One Dog Town (Gaspereau Press, 2019) and the chapbook Infinity Mirror (Frog Hollow Press, 2022). She currently lives in Fredericton, on unceded Wolastoqiyik territory.
shalan joudry is a Mi’kmaw mother, poet, playwright, oral storyteller and ecologist. Using her theatrical background, shalan brings Mi’kmaw stories to a new generation of listeners, as well as recounting personally crafted narratives. The author of three books, her most recent book, Waking Ground (2020) was shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award, the Maxine Tynes Nova Scotia Poetry Award, the 2021 Pat Lowther Memorial Award and the 2021 Indigenous Voices Award for Poetry in English. She lives in her home territory of Kespukwitk (southwest Nova Scotia) with her family in their community of L’sÉ™tkuk (Bear River First Nation).
Michael Prior is the author of two books of poems: Burning Province (McClelland & Stewart, 2020), which won the Canada-Japan Literary Award and the BC & Yukon Book Prizes’ Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize, and Model Disciple (Véhicule Press, 2016), which was named one of the best books of the year by the CBC. Prior was a 2021-2022 Cullman Center Fellow at the New York Public Library and is currently a 2021-2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow with the Jerome Foundation. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The New Republic, the Kenyon Review, Narrative Magazine, PN Review, the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-A-Day series, and elsewhere.
$2000 prize for best poem!Â
Read the contest submission guidelines for more information.
Good luck to all entrants. This year’s contest deadline is Thursday, December 1, 2022 (postmarked for mailed entries and 11:59 pm Pacific Time for Submittable entries).
Click here to submit.