“When you consider things like the stars, our affairs don’t seem to matter very much, do they?” These words by Virginia Woolf bring a certain caution and perspective to the competitive element of the creative process. Still, it is good to complete the work of writing, which almost always happens when the work is shared with others. And then to have it well received is another gift.
Awarded
An MA in Poetry with distinction, Queen’s University, Belfast, 2024/25
Selected for Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poet-In-Residence Mentorship, July, 2024
First Place for Poetry Published in 2023, Canadian Christian Communicators Awards, “One Day,” as published by Faith Today Magazine, Mar., 2023
Selected for Arc Poetry Magazine’s Poet-In-Residence Mentorship, Nov., 2023
Selected via competitive entry for a small cohort at The Seamus Heaney Poetry Summer School, Belfast, NI. Summer, 2023
First Place, Wine Country Writers Festival Writing Contest – Poetry, The Moment in Which I Love Her, September 2022 (anthologized)
Longlist, The Canterbury Festival Poet of the Year 2020(Poetry Judges Luigi Marchini, Gary Studley, and Mara Adamitz Scrupe),When I said I Promise to Follow You All the Days of My Life I wasn’t Telling A Lie, September 2020 (anthologized)
Longlist, PENfro ‘Loving the Earth’ Poetry Competition (Poetry Judge Adam Horowitz), What Shows and What it Might Mean, August 2020
First Place (one of two winners), Federation of British Columbia Writers Literary Writes (Poetry Judge Fiona Tinwei Lam), publication in WordWorks Magazine, What You Carry, March 2019 (print and digital, cash prize)
Top Work of Poetry, Altarwork, Top Ten Posts Of 2016, Enough, February 2017 (digital)
Top 3 Finalist, Okanagan Arts Award for Artistic Excellence in Literature, March 2016
Nominated, Sundress Publications Best of the Net Award (By George Filipovic, Editor, One Throne Magazine), Desert, July 2014 (digital)
CBC Radio: Stuart McLean’s Vinyl Cafe, Stan, A Story, Shortlisted, 2014
2nd Place, Pandoras Collective Poetry Contest, Rose Hip, October 2012 (digital)
Honourable Mention, Pandoras Collective Poetry Contest, The Precise Colour of Orange, October 2012 (digital)
Honourable Mention, Pandoras Collective Poetry Contest, House Plans, February 2012 (digital)
Awarded, Concordia University Summer Literary Seminars – part fellowship to Lithuania, Spring 2011
Selected, Banff Centre, Writing with Style Poetry Residency (Faculty: Gerald Hill), Fall 2011
moving and powerful…integrating narrative, vivid imagery and lyric intensity to explore the devastating impact of the past on the present.
Fiona Tinwei Lam, Poet, Judge for the Federation of BC Writers Literary Prize, 2019
Lesley-Anne Evans 