2024 LCP Book Awards: Longlists
Celebrating the 2024 book award longlists
Congratulations to all the poets and publishers featured on the longlists of our Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, Pat Lowther Memorial Award, and Raymond Souster Award! We are thrilled to be highlighting twelve books on each longlist, selected with care by a panel of jurors. Each award carries a $2,000 prize for the winner.
The Gerald Lampert Memorial Award, for a debut book of poetry, is given in the memory of Gerald Lampert, an arts administrator who organized authors’ tours and took a particular interest in the work of new writers.
The Pat Lowther Memorial Award is awarded memory of the late Pat Lowther, whose career was cut short by her untimely death in 1975. As a women’s prize, the Pat Lowther Memorial Award is inclusive of cis women, trans women, and non-binary writers who feel comfortable being recognized by a women’s prize.
The Raymond Souster Award, which celebrates a new book of poetry by a League member, honors Raymond Souster, a founder of the League.
Award shortlists will be announced on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, and winners will be announced on Wednesday, May 1, 2024. An online reading will be held on Tuesday, April 30, 2024 to celebrate the shortlisted poets.
Shortlists coming April 17, 2024
2024 Gerald Lampert Memorial Award Longlist
For a debut book of poetry
-
Jury: Conyer Clayton, Michael V Smith, Shannon Webb-Campbell
2024 Pat Lowther Memorial Award Longlist
For a book of poetry by a woman
-
Jury: Manahil Bandukwala, Jenna Butler, Isabella Wang
2024 Raymond Souster Award Longlist
For a new book of poetry by a League member
-
Jury: Tara Borin, Adebe DeRango-Adem, David Ly
About the finalists
Born and raised in Kingston, Ontario, Britta Badour, better known as Britta B. is an award-winning artist, public speaker, emcee, voice talent, and poet living in Toronto. She is the author of the poetry collection and audiobook, Wires that Sputter, published by McClelland & Stewart. As a moderator, she has interviewed celebrities like Jay Shetty, Keke Palmer, Ziwe, and Amelia Dimoldenberg, as well as professional athletes and New York Times Best Selling authors. She curates an annual showcase called Soundtracks & Stanzas presented by Toronto International Festival of Authors. Britta holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Guelph and teaches spoken word performance at Seneca College.
"For me, it was a huge accomplishment to realize my dream of being a published poet and to have this book take shape in the world. Being recognized as a finalist means my work has an even greater opportunity to reach wider audiences and be put in the hands of readers who might not have otherwise been introduced to my poetry. Gratitude to the selection committee for amplifying Wires that Sputter!"
Roxanna Bennett is the author of Uncomfortability (Gordon Hill Press, 2023), The Suspect We with Shane Neilson (Palimpsest Press, 2023) The Untranslatable I (Gordon Hill Press, 2021), Unbecoming Prophecy with Khashayar Mohammadi (chapbook, Collusion Books, 2022) & Unmeaningable (Gordon Hill Press, 2019).
On being a finalist, Bennett writes: "we consider poem-making a calling, not a career"
Brandi Bird's chapbook I Am Still Too Much was published by Rahila’s Ghost Press in Spring 2019. Their first full-length poetry collection The All + Flesh was published by House of Anansi Press in Fall 2023. Their work can also be found in Poetry is Dead, Catapult, Hazlitt, Brick Magazine and others.
"Being a finalist means that more people may pick up my book and get inspired to write themselves! That would be the best compliment."
Ali Blythe is author of critically acclaimed poetry collections that explore trans-poetics. Of Blythe, Stewart Cole writes: "It’s exciting to see a writer so conscious of building a body of work within and across collections, pursuing not just a set of ideas and concerns but an artistic vision." He is winner of the Vallum Award for Poetry, twice finalist for the Dorothy Livesay BC Book Award and recipient of an honour of distinction from the Writers Trust of Canada for emerging LGBTQ+ writers. Blythe’s poems and essays are published in national and international literary journals and anthologies, including The Broadview Introduction to Literature, Best Canadian Essays and Best Canadian Poetry. Blythe has held roles as a guest editor for special editions of literary magazines including The League of Canadian Poets, Arc Magazine and Malahat Review, and as editor-in-chief for the Claremont Review, an international literary magazine for youth. He lives in Victoria, BC and works at Royal Roads University in digital communications.
Website: hialiblythe.com
Publisher: icehouse poetry | Goose Lane Editions
"I took a chance with Stedfast. Of writing my own work and love literally into the Cannon. And of exploring a trans-poetics that is not bound to my own identity narrative but instead pursues a lyric project that is bound to (and freed by) a formal constraint. This nod from the League for that work feels great, and yes!, freeing."
Darby Minott Bradford is a poet and translator based in Tio'tia:ke (Montreal). They are the author of Dream of No One but Myself (Brick Books, 2021), which won the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry and was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize and Governor General’s Literary Awards. House Within a House by Nicholas Dawson (Brick Books, 2023), Bradford's first translation, won the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award, the John Glassco Translation Prize, and was a GG finalist. Bottom Rail on Top is their second book.
"As the institutional supports for what we do as artists and poets are faltering, the recognition of my peers and colleagues that the Raymond Souster Award represents feels like the whole thing. I'm honoured to be a finalist alongside an incredible group of poets, and I can't wait to take a moment to celebrate what we're up to, what we're about, as a community."
Originally from Brigus, Newfoundland and Labrador, Maggie Burton currently lives in St. John’s with her four children where she works as a City Councillor, musician, and writer. Her first book of poetry, Chores, was published by Breakwater Books in 2023. Burton’s poems have been published in Prism, Grain, Riddle Fence, The Malahat Review, and other Canadian journals. She is the recipient of two NL Arts and Letters Awards for poetry.
"My hope is that being a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Award brings Chores and other poetry collections published by Breakwater Books here in Newfoundland and Labrador to new audiences across Canada. "
Jake Byrne is the author of Celebrate Pride with Lockheed Martin (Wolsak & Wynn, 2023) and DADDY (Brick Books, 2024), and the 2019 winner of the CV2 Foster Prize for Poetry. They live in Tka:ronto/Toronto.
"It's an honour to be named a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and to be chosen from among all the brilliant books published by my friends and colleagues. I want to thank the jurists and organizers, who have difficult jobs to do.
"But mostly I want to remind any artist struggling with self-doubt or despair to hang in there, to not abandon yourself or your art."
nancy viva davis halifax was born on the North shore of New Brunswick on Mi'gma'gi territory \ they is a white \ queer \ crip poet & settler \ a celtic mongrel \ they is the author of hook & the recently completed act normal \ they lives & works on stolen lands – heir to a complex history & present of dispossession \ their writin is oriented as an activist & embodied practice - of the body & responsive to wounds written on body\s they imagines life as lived through deep connections & ways of knowin that are off-centre multiple & sensuous \ their life is entangled with a glorious array of sparkley wonderfuls
On being selected as a finalist, nancy viva davis halifax writes: "i’m really pleased \ it makes me happy that people are reading poetry & consequently i feel like the arts do matter \ that an ordinary attunement to the world - to the word - matters \ finally i am hoping that this will give me the courage to continue \ knowing what at heart I must turn towards \ what turns towards me \ is difficult"
Amanda Earl (she/her) is a queer writer, visual poet, editor, and publisher who lives on Algonquin Anishinaabeg traditional territory, colonially known as Ottawa, Ontario. Earl is managing editor of Bywords.ca, and editor of Judith: Women Making Visual Poetry (Timglaset Editions, Sweden, 2021). Her latest book is Beast Body Epic, a collection of long poems provoked by her near-death heatlh crisis.
"I am thrilled to be a finalist for this award. I write so that kindred misfits don't feel alone. Beast Body Epic is for anyone who has circled the drain or cared for someone who has. I am hoping that this attention causes people who need the book to find it and derive some reassurance from it that their experiences are not unseen. Healthcare in Canada is at a a crisis. I am very lucky that I survived, and grateful to be alive."
Hannah Green is a writer and poetry editor at CV2. Her debut collection Xanax Cowboy won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry. She likes to draw sad cowboys when she isn't writing about them.
On being selected as a finalist, Hannah Green writes: "It is so exciting!!"
Eva H.D. wrote this book (the natural hustle) and also Jackals & Fireflies, not a book.
"I failed out of school, so I'm hoping that being a finalist for this award comes with a diploma. My career will never be the same again."
Jess Housty ('Cúagilákv) is a queer and neurodivergent parent, writer, and grassroots activist of Heiltsuk and mixed settler ancestry. They serve their community as an herbalist and land-based educator alongside broader work in the non-profit and philanthropic sectors. They are inspired and guided by relationships with their homelands, their extended family, and their non-human kin, and they are committed to raising their children in a similar framework of kinship and land love. They reside and thrive in their unceded ancestral territory in the community of Bella Bella, BC.
"I live in my geographically remote motherlands where I am most often in community with my family, my Nation, and my non-human relations. My debut poetry collection feels like an invitation to connect with a wider world and sense of community beyond the hyperlocality of my territory and kin. I am humbled to be uplifted as a finalist, and I feel profound gratitude to be welcomed and affirmed in a broader community of writers and readers. To be witnessed in this way is a gift."
Wanda John-Kehewin is a Cree writer who came to Vancouver, BC, on the Greyhound when she was nineteen, pregnant — carrying a bag of chips, a bottle of pop, thirty dollars, and hope. Wanda has been writing about the near decimation of Indigenous culture, language, and tradition as a means to process history and trauma that allows her to stand in her truth and to share that truth openly. Wanda is a multi-genre writer who has published in many different genres in hopes of reaching others. With many years of traveling the healing path (well, mostly stumbling), she brings personal experience of healing to share with others. Wanda is the mother of five amazing children, who continue to inspire her to write for future generations. Wanda completed her MFA at UBC in 2022.
"Being a finalist means that I am reaching others in a good kind way with my words, thoughts and experiences. It means that future generations will have Indigenous writers to turn to for inspiration. It also means the Indigenous experience lives on in history and doesn't just become the past. It means my words have fell on ears who are listening with open minds and hearts."
Meghan Kemp-Gee is the author of The Animal in the Room (Coach House Books, 2023), as well as three poetry chapbooks: What I Meant to Ask, Things to Buy in New Brunswick, and More. She also co-created the webcomic Contested Strip, recently adapted into the graphic novel One More Year. A graduate of Amherst College and Chapman University, she is currently a PhD candidate at the University of New Brunswick, Fredericton and resides in North Vancouver.
"I wrote The Animal in the Room about connection and reflection: how poems, like animals, can act as little other-selves, mirrors, and long-lost relatives. Since moving back to Canada in 2021, I've had the tremendous fortune of finding wonderful communities and connections with writers and artists on both coasts. I'm so grateful to be a finalist for this award; recognition from my peers and role models feels like a great professional honour, and I hope it will also allow me to continue to connect with readers, writers, and students through my poetry."
Eimear Laffan's [about]ness was published in 2023. She was a finalist for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in Poetry in 2022. Her work has been published in Geist, The Ex-Puritan, & wildness. She lives in Nelson, British Columbia.
"I feel an immense gratitude at being a finalist for this award. So many great writers have been recognised throughout its history and there are so many affecting debuts out there at the moment. It is an honour to be in the mix. "
Amy Ching-Yan Lam is an artist and writer. Her debut collection of poetry, Baby Book, was published by Brick Books and was a finalist for the 2023 Governor General’s Literary Award in Poetry. Other publications include Looty Goes to Heaven (Eastside Projects, 2022) commissioned for the Commonwealth Games public art program, and Property Journal (forthcoming 2024, Book Works). She has presented visual art, film, and performance work internationally, at the 11th Seoul MediaCity Biennale, the Western Front, Centre Clark, and numerous other venues, and participated in residencies at Macdowell and Delfina Foundation. From 2006 to 2020 she was part of the performance art duo Life of a Craphead. She was born in Hong Kong and lives in Tkaronto/Toronto, which is Mississauga Anishinaabeg treaty territory.
"I’m honoured that Baby Book is a finalist for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award. While writing the book, I was thinking about how the forces of settler-colonialism have shaped every aspect of my life, yet these histories have also been deliberately contorted and obscured from me. But even as they’re hidden, they’re so obvious: they remain clear to the senses, they can’t be ignored. And so I accept this honour with Palestine in my heart — free, free Palestine!"
T. Liem is the author of Slows: Twice (Coach House 2023), and Obits. (Coach House, 2018). Their writing has been published in Apogee, Plenitude, The Boston Review, Grain, Maisonneuve, Catapult, The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and elsewhere. They live in Montreal / Tio’Tia:ke, unceded Kanien’kehá:ka territories.
"A career in writing always feels precarious and though awards and lists are not the point, it is an honour to be included and supported in this way. Not to be dramatic, but I never feel certain that I will be able to continue writing and publishing so I'm grateful to the League for making this space to celebrate and for highlighting the work that's been done. Big congratulations to all the finalists!"
Sneha Madhavan-Reese is the author of one previous poetry collection, Observing the Moon, which was a finalist for the Alfred G. Bailey Prize. Her writing has appeared in publications around the world, including Alaska Quarterly Review, The Moth, New Contrast, Rabbit Poetry Journal, and The Best Canadian Poetry in English 2016. She is the 2015 winner of Arc Poetry Magazine's Diana Brebner Prize, was shortlisted for the 2015 Montreal International Poetry Prize, and received an honourable mention at the 2018 National Magazine Awards. She serves on the editorial board of Canthius magazine and lives with her family in Ottawa. Elementary Particles is her second book.
"I am so grateful for all the support I have received for Elementary Particles. It means so much to me that people have found my book engaging and meaningful. I am honoured to be a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award."
Laila Malik is a desisporic writer in Adobigok. Her debut poetry collection, archipelago (Book*Hug Press, 2023) was named one of the CBC’s Best Canadian Poetry Books of 2023. Her essays have been nominated for the Pushcart and Best of the Net, longlisted in various contests, and published in Canadian and international literary journals.
"I know enough to know that the quiet aunties and children who make your food and fade into the background are the most furious of secret poets, that the best is hidden deep within the mundane, may never be known to a world that strains and churns. And yet, as a person who never had the opportunity to exclusively devote my time to writing, being named a finalist is a nod to the quiet aunty and child in me, the one who has stubbornly continued to write against all the chafe and vagary and unlikeliness. It means the opportunity to connect with and learn from those who also insist on summoning spirit through their wordwork, and the opportunity to offer others a clear window of possibility that may otherwise have seemed unimaginable."
Samantha Nock is a Cree-Métis writer and poet originally from Treaty 8 Territory in the Peace Region of northeast British Columbia. Her family is originally from sâkitawâhk ᓵᑭᑕᐚᕽ (Île-à-la-Crosse), Saskatchewan. Samantha currently resides on unceded xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, Sḵwx̱wú7mesh, and səlilwətaɬ Lands in so-called Vancouver. She has had works published in Maisonneuve, Vice, Prism International, and Best Canadian Poetry, among others. You can find her on Twitter @sammymarie and Instagram @2broke4bingo.
"I am truly shocked and grateful to be amongst the other fantastic finalists for this award. My dream was to publish this book of poems and now to see that it resonates with others and to see them find connection with my work is a reward all in itself."
Bradley Peters grew up in the Fraser Valley, graduated from UBC’s Creative Writing Program, and has since been shortlisted or named runner-up for several awards. Bradley won the Short Grain Contest, and his poems have recently appeared in Arc, Geist, Grain, SubTerrain, The Malahat Review, and elsewhere. Bradley’s debut poetry collection, Sonnets from a Cell, is published with Brick Books. Since its release, Sonnets from a Cell was listed as one of CBC’s Best Books of the Year, and Bradley has been a featured guest on Radio Q with Tom Power. The poems in Bradley Peters' debut collection mix inmate speech, prison psychology, skateboard slang, and contemporary lyricism in a way that is tough and tender, and that critiques the structures that sentence so many to lose.
"Never in my wildest dreams would I have anticipated such an incredible honour. My biggest hope is that being a finalist for this award will help illuminate the systemic issues within our countries inherently violent penal system. I am floored and full of gratitude."
Nikki Reimer (pronouns she/they), poet and interdisciplinary artist, works at the intersections of the analog and the digital, challenging conventional responses to bodies, death, and capital. Their fourth book of poetry, No Town Called We, was published by Talon Books in fall 2023. GRIEFWAVE.com, a multimedia, web-based, extended elegy, was launched in February 2022. She is currently exploring digital mediation of death and networked grief while working towards an MA in communication and media studies. A fifth-generation white prairie settler of Ukrainian and Russian Mennonite descent, Reimer lives on the occupied lands of the peoples of the Treaty 7 region of southern Alberta.
Though their practice began in the literary arts, Reimer’s artistic work has taken turns into multiple forms of interdisciplinary artmaking, including visual art and video, installation work, and performance practice. Reimer’s work has been extensively reviewed, often noting their embrace of dark humour and feminist refusal.
"I'm honoured and delighted to receive this recognition from the League and my peers, and shall take it as an encouragement to keep writing."
Sandra Ridley is the author of three chapbooks and five books of poetry, the most recent of which is Vixen, published by Book*Hug Press in the fall of 2023. Ridley has been nominated for the Ontario Arts Council’s KM Hunter Artist Award for Mid-Career Writer and the Ottawa Arts Council’s Mid-Career Artist Award. She lives in Ottawa.
"Given Pat Lowther's life and work, and the full context of this award, there is no higher honour for Vixen. I am deeply grateful."
Kate Siklosi is a poet, scholar, publisher, teacher, and new mom. Her work includes Selvage (Invisible 2023), leavings (Timglaset 2021), and six chapbooks of poetry. Her critical and creative work has also been featured across North America, Europe, and the UK. She is the curator of the Small Press Map of Canada and co-founding editor of Gap Riot Press, a neat little feminist experimental press.
"It's an incredible honour to be a finalist, especially for this prize in particular that celebrates and recognizes the work of women in Canada. My work involves a lot of domestic, handcrafted visual work, which for too long was not seen as serious work, so it is wonderful to have some recognition that this work has a definite place. Also, this book in particular took me many years to write, and was a difficult, trying process as it deals with some really sensitive familial trauma; so to have this book connect with others and ignite further conversations is really energizing."
Kai Cheng Thom is a writer, performance artist, community healer, lasagna lover and wicked witch. She is the author of six books in multiple genres, including Falling Back in Love with Being Human: Letters to Lost Souls, a national bestseller in Canada, and the novel Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars, which was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award. Her poetry collection a place called No Homeland and her essay collection, I Hope We Choose Love, are also award-winning. Quill & Quire called Kai Cheng's writing "the kale of CanLit" because of celebrity interest in her work, which has been featured by actress Emma Watson's feminist book club and on a podcast hosted by Dame Julie Andrews.
"To be a finalist for a major Canadian literary award in poetry is, for me, the realization of multiple dreams: My personal dream, certainly, to be recognized as a literary artist in this country, but also that of my Chinese family who emigrated here in the early half of the 20th century at a time when Chinese migrants were heavily impacted by the Head Tax and Chinese Exclusion Act. They suffered and survived for the dream of a bright future for their descendants. I hope that my work and life can honour them, as well as the many trans women of colour who died before me in the struggle to have trans voices heard within the dominant culture."
Ami Xherro is a poet, performer, and translator. Her work draws out the incomprehensible from the ordinary, playing with logics and feelings of association. She is the author of Drank, Recruited (Guernica Editions, 2023) and The Unfinished Flame (Swimmers Group, 2017). Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming with ugly duckling presse, The Capilano Review, C Magazine, and Metatron Press. Ami has performed internationally at The Poetry Project (NYC), Bangor University (Wales), and venues across Toronto. She is a co-founder of the Toronto Experimental Translation Collective and co-editor of Barricade: A Journal of Antifascism & Translation. She is currently pursuing a PhD in Comparative Literature at the University of Toronto, where she runs Circumfluence, a series of gatherings around the questions of intimacy and influence with Anna Foran.
"Being a finalist, that is, to be recognized by the League and to be a finalist for the Pat Lowther Award in the lineage of so many poets I love is a privilege. This recognition, as a new poet carving out a space for myself, is touching and pivotal, as it will propel my career forward and encourage me to continue to pursue what I love."
A. Light Zachary is the author of More Sure, which was recently named a Stonewall Honor Book of 2024.
On being selected as a finalist, A. Light Zachary writes: "This is my favourite book. I am grateful and gratified to know it is being read with care and attention."