2024 Bridge Prize Winners and Main Jury
2024 Bridge Prize
The 2022 Bridge Prize winners
University of Victoria graduate student pens 2024 Bridge Prize short story contest winning entry
The win earned Audet the top prize of $7,500, the largest cash prize for student writing in Canada, and validated a process that was years in the making. Audet, a wildland firefighter in British Columbia, described the emotions he experienced when he learned he’d won the competition.
"When I received the call telling me I was being awarded the Bridge Prize, I was standing in an airfield in the Northern Rockies, waiting to be deployed to a new wildfire. As we spoke, helicopters and trucks came and went, a column of dark smoke thickened in the distance, and thousands of people nearby were being forced from their homes,” he said. “There was joy and relief in my heart, knowing that a story I had spent years working on had received such warm praise. I'm immensely grateful to the Bridge Prize organizers, Terry Whitehead and Dr. Shelly Wismath, the brilliant jurors, and the University of Lethbridge for recognizing the strength of storytelling.”
Audet’s story was described as “dense and contemplative; the rhythm is tidal . . . the story is simultaneously speculative, contemporary, and historical. The writer has great talent, feeling and artistry,” commented Bridge Prize juror and Quebec author Madeleine Thien.
As the winner, Audet was able to work with Sirarose Wilensky, editor with House of Anansi Press, on The Lobster, which is now featured on the Bridge Prize website.
The biennial competition, established in 2020, is the only national writing competition of its kind in Canada and featured submissions from students in nine provinces. Only students attending colleges and universities in Canada can apply, with $12,000 in cash prizes awarded. The winner and three finalists also receive a $200 gift card courtesy of Munro’s Books of Victoria. New this year, the contest also recognized the best story written by an undergraduate student and the best written by a student at the University of Lethbridge.
“Congratulations to Jeremy, the three finalists, and our new award winners for their compelling short stories,” says Dr. Shelly Wismath, retired dean of the School of Liberal Education and Bridge Prize administrator. “Once again, our local and main juries praised the high quality of writing, diverse styles and imaginative storytelling. The future of Canadian fiction is in very good hands.”
Other finalists, who were each awarded $1,000, included: Susan Sechrist from the University of British Columbia and her story Ecphrasis.
“Memorable characters and concepts in an efficient and innovative vignette structure. Had a collage-like feel, or mosaic-like, with the smaller daubs of colour creating the larger picture. Elegant and skillful,” concluded juror George Murray.
Ayda Niknami, also from UBC, created The Martyr’s Mother, which was described as, “Imaginative, fast-paced, interesting, visual. The Martyr’s Mother is commendable for being highly imaginative capturing the readers imagination. It was interesting and very visual,” said juror Michelle Good.
Camille Pavlenko, from UBC and a ULethbridge alumna, was the third finalist with her story A Disease of the Hollow Organs.
“The writing is inviting, open and imaginative, with characters interacting and intertwining beautifully like a well-orchestrated dance,” commented juror Danny Ramadan. “The metaphors were delightful, and the command of the plot was strong and capable.”
A new prize recognizing the top undergraduate story honour went to Caitlyn Harding of the University of the Fraser Valley. Her piece, If Normandie Avenue Could Talk, also won her $1,000.
Indie MacGarva earned $500 as the best story from ULethbridge writers with Alice Is There.
The cycle now begins for the 2026 Bridge Prize with the competition’s Main Jury to be announced in November. Submissions for the event open in January 2025.
Click here for the 12 stories chosen to advance to the final stages of evaluation for 2024.
Jeremy Audet (left) receives the Bridge Prize award designed by University of Lethbridge sculptor Niall Donaghy from Chancellor Terry Whitehead.
Location: Munro's Books in Victoria
Sheena Kamal
Sheena Kamal is the author of four novels. She holds an HBA in Political Science from the University of Toronto and was awarded a TD Canada Trust scholarship for community leadership and activism around the issue of homelessness. Her debut novel The Lost Ones (US)/Eyes Like Mine (UK) won the 2018 Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, a Strand Magazine Critics Award and Macavity Award for Best First Novel. It has been sold in fifteen countries and was a Globe and Mail Bestseller, a Time Magazine Recommended Read, an iBooks Best Book, a Bustle Best Book and a Powell's Pick. Her debut YA novel Fight Like a Girl was shortlisted for the White Pine Award. Sheena lives in Montreal.
Danny Ramadan
Danny Ramadan is a Syrian-Canadian author, public speaker, and advocate for LGBTQ+ refugees. His debut novel, The Clothesline Swing, was shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award, longlisted for Canada Reads, and named a Best Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star. Danny’s children book, Salma the Syrian Chef, won the Nautilus Book Award, The Middle East Book Award, and was named a Best Book by both Kirkus and School Library Journal. His latest novel, The Foghorn Echoes, was released in 2022, and his upcoming memoir, Crooked Teeth, will be released by Penguin Random House in 2024. Danny has an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. During his final year at UBC in 2020, he was a finalist for the inaugural Bridge Prize award for his short story On the Miraculous Return of Khalid from the Dead. Danny lives in Vancouver.
Michelle Good
Michelle Good is a Cree writer and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. After working for Indigenous organizations for twenty-five years, she obtained a law degree and advocated for residential school survivors. She earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia while still practising law and managing her own law firm. Her poems, short stories, and essays have been published in magazines and anthologies across Canada, and her poetry was included on two lists of the best Canadian poetry in 2016 and 2017. Five Little Indians, her first novel, won the HarperCollins/UBC Best New Fiction Prize, the Amazon First Novel Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Award, the Evergreen Award, the City of Vancouver Book of the Year Award, and Canada Reads 2022. It was also longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and a finalist for the Writer’s Trust Award, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and the Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes. In October 2022, Michelle received an Honorary Doctor of Letters from Simon Fraser University. Her latest book, a collection of essays entitled Truth Telling: Seven Conversations About Indigenous Life in Canada, was released in May 2023.
Madeliene Thien
Madeliene Thien was born in Vancouver. She is the author of four books of fiction, including Dogs at the Perimeter and Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which received 2016 The Giller Prize and The Governor-General’s Literary Award for Fiction. Her books have been shortlisted for The Booker Prize, The Women’s Prize for Fiction, and The Folio Prize, longlisted for a Carnegie Medal, and translated into more than 25 languages. Madeleine’s essays and stories can be found in The New Yorker, Granta, Brick, The Guardian, The Times Literary Supplement, and The New York Review of Books. She has taught literature and fiction in Canada, China, Germany, Nigeria, the United States, Zimbabwe, Singapore, and Japan and currently teaches writing and literature at the City University of New York.
George Murray
George Murray is the author of ten books, including seven books of poetry, two best-selling books of aphorisms, and a book for children; his latest being Problematica: New and Selected Poems, 1995 - 2020. His work has been widely anthologized and published in magazines, journals, and newspapers all over Canada, as well as internationally, including: The Drunken Boat, Granta, Iowa Review, Jacket, London Magazine, Mid-American Review, New American Writing, New Welsh Review, The Puritan, Radical Society and The Walrus. Raised in rural Ontario, he currently lives in St. John's, Newfoundland.
Nicholas Herring
Nicholas Herring is a carpenter and writer whose work has appeared in The Puritan and The Fiddlehead. He graduated from St. Jerome’s University in Ontario with an Honours degree in English Literature and attended the University of Toronto where he completed a Master of Arts degree in Creative Writing. He received the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in 2022 for his debut novel, Some Hellish. Nicholas lives in Murray Harbour, Prince Edward Island.
Shirarose Wilensky - Editor
The Bridge Prize is excited to announce that Shirarose Wilensky, an editor with the House of Anansi Press, will work with the winning author to complete a final edit of the winning short story.
Shirarose Wilensky works for House of Anansi Press from her home in Port Moody, BC. She attended Simon Fraser University’s Master of Publishing Program and has worked for Arsenal Pulp Press, Greystone Books, Douglas & McIntyre, and Harbour Publishing. In 2021, she won the Tom Fairley Award for editing Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi. Other bestselling and acclaimed books she’s edited include A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett, Rebent Sinner by Ivan Coyote, Shut Up You’re Pretty by Téa Mutonji, and The Woo-Woo by Lindsay Wong. She acquires and edits literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, with a special interest in BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+, and debut writers.
The winner in the 2024 competition will have editing help available from editor Shirarose Wilensky to polish the story.