Catherine St. Denis, Writer

For the second year in a row, I am a finalist for PEN Canada’s New Voices Award. It’s a huge honour. PEN Canada’s Executive Director, Brendan de Caires, called last week to tell me the good news. This year, he said, there were three hundred entrants. Huge congratulations to winner Christine Wu and other finalists Lindsay Foran, Luka Poljak, and Sharlene Lazin. Thanks to judges Jónína Kirton, Chelene Knight, and Alexander MacLeod for all their hard work and to PEN Canada for running the contest. PEN Canada is a very important organization, one of the 148 chapters of PEN International. Founded in 1926, it has a membership of over 1,000 writers and supporters who campaign on behalf of writers around the world who are persecuted, imprisoned, and exiled for exercising their right to freedom of expression.

You can read a sample poem from my submission by scrolling down the page a bit here.