And the winners are…

FIRST PLACE ($1,500):

• ‘Predator, Prey,’ Hilary Fair, Clinton, ON

SECOND PLACE ($1000):

• ‘The Remember Timeline,’ Stephanie Chou, Vancouver, BC

THIRD PLACE ($500):

• ‘Witches of Silver Creek,’ Adèle Barclay, Vancouver, BC

The winning entries, along with judge Michelle Cyca’s essay, will appear in EVENT 54/1 (Spring/Summer 2025).

Congratulations to all the other short-listed entrants:

• ‘Deportment Classes and Other Calamities,’ Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt, Canton de Hatley, QC
• ‘Budapest, Again,’ T.B. Grennan, Brooklyn, NY
• ‘Tens of Thousands of Wounds,’ Adrienne Gruber, Bowen Island, BC
• ‘Seasons of Summer,’ Višnja Milidragović, Vancouver, BC
• ‘Professional Stigmatizations,’ Shane Neilson, Cambridge, ON
• ‘Surrey Girl,’ Leslie Palleson, North Vancouver, BC
• ‘1940 Lonsdale,’ Russell Thornton, North Vancouver, BC

Thanks to those writers who sent manuscripts to us and to our contest readers and judge! Visit our Contest page for details on the next contest.

Join our mailing list (on your right), check our blog and follow us on Bluesky and Facebook for regular contest updates. Contest terms are subject to change.

Michelle Cyca (she/her) is a journalist, essayist and literary critic. She is an editor with The Narwhal and a contributing writer to The Walrus, for which she received a National Magazine Award in 2024 for best column. Her feature story, “The Curious Case of Gina Adams,” received a National Magazine Award in 2023 for investigative journalism, and was published in April 2024 as a limited-edition hardcover by Hingston & Olsen.

Her writing can be found in Best Canadian Essays 2025 and the anthology Points of Interest, and has also appeared in The Globe & Mail, The Guardian, Maclean’s and Chatelaine. Previously, she was the editor-in-chief and co-publisher of SAD Mag. She lives on the unceded homelands of the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations in what is recently called Vancouver, and is a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation in Treaty 6, Saskatchewan.