Latest Winner, Danuta Gleed Award 2008

The Writers’ Union of Canada and John Gleed are pleased to announce that Andrew Hood is the recipient of the $10,000 DANUTA GLEED LITERARY AWARD for Pardon Our Monsters (Esplanade), judged the best first English-language collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2007.

The judges Genni Gunn, Donna Morrissey and Fred Wah said of their first choice, Pardon Our Monsters (Esplanade): “Very engaging writing, and clean, economic approach balancing description and dialogue. The voices feel very present and the stories convey an original perspective. Sentences and paragraphs move in an interesting, rhythmic way, with lots of variety, which deflects the predictable.”

Runners-up Roberta Rees and Valerie Stetson will each receive $500.

Long After Fathers (Coteau): by Roberta Rees, “provides an outstanding meld of poetry and prose, as well as intense, particular attention to the literal words on the move, and how they react to one another, both descriptively and in dialogue,” commented the judges.

Of Valerie Stetson’s The Year I Got Impatient (Oolichan) the judges had this to say: "Good sense of detail and voice. Interesting stories that deal with human emotions in surprising ways.”

The DANUTA GLEED LITERARY AWARD is given in celebration of the life of Danuta Gleed, a writer whose short fiction won several awards before her death in December 1996. Danuta Gleed’s first collection of short fiction, One of the Chosen, was posthumously published by BuschekBooks. The Award is made possible through a generous donation from John Gleed, founder of JetForm Inc., in memory of his late wife, and is administered by The Writers' Union of Canada.

The Writers' Union of Canada is our country's national organization representing professional authors of books. Founded in 1973, the Union is dedicated to fostering writing in Canada, and promoting the rights, freedoms, and economic well being of all writers.

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