2016 Alberta Literary Award Winners Announced

The Writers’ Guild of Alberta is pleased to reveal the winners of the 2016 Alberta Literary Awards. More than 120 attended the 2016 Alberta Literary Awards Wine and Cheese Gala, part of the Writers’ Guild of Alberta’s 2016 Calgary Conference, Creativity and Happiness.

This celebration marked the 34th anniversary of the Alberta Literary Awards and brought together writers from across Alberta.

The Alberta Literary Awards were created by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta in 1982 to recognize excellence in writing by Alberta authors. This year, jurors deliberated over 250 submissions to select 25 finalists in eight categories.

The Writers’ Guild of Alberta is the largest provincial writers’ organization in Canada, and was formed in 1980 to provide a meeting ground and collective voice for the writers of the province. Our mission is to inspire, connect, support, encourage, and promote writers and writing, to safeguard the freedom to write and to read, and to advocate for the well-being of writers.

Congratulations to all of this year’s winners!

Watch the video played at the Alberta Literary Awards Gala here. (Our thanks to this year's WGA summer intern, Rachel Wieringa, for producing the video for us!)

2016 Alberta Literary Awards Winners

R. Ross Annett Award for Children’s Literature (Supported by the Under the Arch Youth Foundation at The Calgary Foundation)

• Kate Boorman (Edmonton) – Winterkill, Abrams/Amulet

Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction (Sponsored by The Banff Centre)

• Bradley Somer (Calgary) – Fishbowl, St. Martin’s/Raincoast 

Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction (Supported by Jane Stevens and the WGA Board of Directors)

• Andrew Nikiforuk (Calgary) – Slick Water: Fracking and One Insider’s Stand Against the World’s Most Powerful Industry, Greystone

Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama (Sponsored by Alberta Views)

• Beth Graham (Edmonton) – The Gravitational Pull of Bernice Trimble, Playwrights Canada Press

Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry (Sponsored by Stephan V. Benediktson)

• Marilyn Dumont (Edmonton) – The Pemmican Eaters, ECW Press

James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction (Supported by Tony Johnson)

• Jane Harris (Lethbridge) – “The Unheard Patient,” Alberta Views

Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story (Supported by Vanna Tessier and Guy Tessier)

• Thomas Wharton (Edmonton) – “Filters,” FreeFall

Jon Whyte Memorial Essay Award (Supported by the Friends of Frances – In Memory of Frances Hern)

• Elizabeth Withey (Edmonton) – “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”

WGA Golden Pen Award for Lifetime Achievement (Supported by Aritha van Herk)

• Greg Hollingshead

The WGA is also grateful to the following organizations for their support of the 2016 Alberta Literary Awards!