MFA Community Update
While our ever-growing 200+ alum makes it impossible to keep track of all of the MFA community achievements, here are some of the highlights from the last year or so. Many congratulations to those who’ve published books throughout the last half of 2023 and into 2024.
You can learn more and order books directly through the links provided here, in the author’s names.
We celebrate new fiction from Sheung-King, Canisia Lubrin, Michael Melgaard, Greg Rhyno, Elizabeth Ruth, Nadine Sander-Green, Leanne Toshiko Simpson, and Zoe Whittall, and from alum and associated faculty member Ayelet Tsabari; story collections from Danila Botha, Hollay Ghadery, Deepa Rajagopalan, and Zoe Whittall; poetry collections from D.M. Bradford, Jessica Popeski, Anna Lee-Popham, Elizabeth Ruth, and from associated faculty member Shani Mootoo; and children’s books by Dave Cameron and Sahar Golshan.
The tenth-anniversary edition of Kate Cayley’s award-winning story collection How You Were Born was released with three new stories, and current MFA student K.J. Aiello recently published (part memoir, part cultural criticism) The Monster and the Mirror: Mental Illness, Magic, and the Stories We Tell.
In the summer of 2023, Taylor Marie Graham and composer William Rowson’s opera for children, Frog Song, premiered at Here For Now Theatre with the Stratford Symphony, and Robert Chafe's new work, Taking On Water, toured Newfoundland in September. In 2024, you could catch recent grad Alanna Schwartz’s Church4Kidz puppet play (not for kids) at the Hamilton Fringe Festival in July, and Beverley Cooper’s productions Jim Watts: Girl Reporter (in Millbrook, Ontario) and The Trials of Maggie Pollock (at The Blyth Festival) throughout the month of August. Two Birds One Stone, a conversation between a Muslim Palestinian and a Jewish Canadian, was co-written by Natasha Greenblatt and it just finished its run in Montreal in early November, at the Teesri Duniya Theatre.
As always, our graduates have also gathered some impressive accolades.
In the last half of 2023, Erin Robinsong’s Wet Dream won the 2023 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and Kai Thomas’ In the Upper Country won the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
MFA instructor Kyo Maclear won the 2023 Governor General's Award for Nonfiction for Unearthing A Story of Tangled Love and Family Secrets and she was also awarded the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People in recognition of her lifetime achievement in children's literature.
Other U of G alumna nominees for the Governor General’s Award in 2023 included Kai Thomas for In the Upper Country, current MFA student Suvendrini Lena for The Enchanted Loom, and D.M. Bradford for House Within a House, the translation of Désormais, ma demeure by Nicholas Dawson.
The Private Apartments by Idman Nur Omar was shortlisted for The Writers' Union of Canada Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Nadia L. Hohn received the 2023-2024 ETFO Anti-Racist and Equity Award and was longlisted for the BookPal Owl Awards for The Antiracist Kitchen. The CBC Books Best Canadian Poetry books of 2023 list included titles by D.M. Bradford, Britta Badour and Candace De Taeye. Laurie D. Graham’s Fast Commute was shortlisted for the 2023 Trillium Award for Poetry, and the poem “Sweetness | מתיקות” by current MFA student Anna Swanson was shortlisted for the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize.
Current student Aline-Mwezi Niyonsenga’s novella Fell Our Selves was shortlisted for the 2023 Woollahra Digital Literary Award. And to close out 2023, Tyler Pennock (for Blood) and Candace de Taeye (for Pronounced/Workable) were nominated for the 2023 ReLit Award in the poetry category, and current MFA student K.R. Byggdin's Wonder World and All The Shining People by Kathy Friedman were nominated for the 2023 ReLit Award for Fiction. Wonder World also won the 2023 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.
So far, in 2024, A. Light Zachary's More Sure and Britta Badour's Wires that Sputter were both 2024 Trillium Book Award finalists, and A. Light Zachary won this award.
Peacocks of Instagram by Deepa Rajagopalan was shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize, D.M. Bradford, Britta Badour, and A. Light Zachary were all on the 2024 League of Canadian Poets prize shortlists, and Canisia Lubrin’s Code Noir was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction.
Robert Chafe’s I Forgive You was a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award for Drama, and D.M. Bradford’s Bottom Rail on Top was shortlisted for both the 2024 A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and the 2024 Raymond Souster Award.
Canisia Lubrin’s Code Noir and Sheung-King’s Batshit Seven were both shortlisted for the 2024 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and, just a few weeks ago, Sheung-King's novel took home the $60 000 prize.
Batshit Seven, Ayelet Tsabari's Songs for the Broken Hearted, Lubrin's Code Noir, and Kyo Maclear's noodles on a bicycle were all "2024 Globe & Mail 100 Best Books of the Year" picks.
Even further kudos go out to MFA grads who continue to have significant impact on the greater community.
Author and literary festival director Jael Richardson won the Professional Association of Canadian Literary Agents's (PACLA) inaugural Publishing Professional of the Year Award for her work developing the FOLD literary festival. The festival celebrates its tenth anniversary this year.
The township of Scugog, Ontario, appointed their first Poet Laureate, MFA alum Hollay Ghadery, while Lishai Peel, ED of GritLIT Literary Festival, was appointed the City of Hamilton's first ever Poet in Place for a two-year engagement.
At the University of Guelph Teaching and Learning Innovations Conference in May 2024, second-year MFA student Alya Somar presented a paper, entitled “Shame as a Barrier to Transformative Learning.” And thank you, Alex Cafarelli, for two years as co-host extraordinaire, and Chi Leung Lee and Desiree McKenzie for your valued contributions as the 2024-25 Speakeasy reading series unfolds. Speakeasy continues to draw a crowd at Glad Day Bookshop and by live stream each month.
For ongoing MFA highlights, keep tabs on our Facebook, X, and Instagram feeds, and keep a look-out for our Speakeasy invitations—and note that SETS has had a name change! We're now the School of Theatre, English, and Creative Writing (SoTEC).
If we’ve missed your news, please let us know; we always want to know what you’re up to. Either share your publications, events, and other literary news with us on social media or send it directly to Lisa Richter (thank you, Lisa, too, for your savvy with our socials) at guelphmfasocialmedia@gmail.com.
If you'd like your news to land in the inboxes of alum and current students, please send it to me, Libby Johnstone at cwmfa@uoguelph.ca, for distribution. Wishing everyone all the best in 2025, while we navigate the writing life in these challenging times.