The City of Edmonton, Edmonton Arts Council, and Audreys Books are pleased to announce Billy-Ray Belcourt as the winner of the 2018 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize for his book of poetry, This Wound is a World (Frontenac House, 2017).
Billy-Ray Belcourt is from the Driftpile Cree Nation. He is a PhD student in the Department of English and Film Studies at the University of Alberta. He was a 2016 Rhodes Scholar and was named by CBC Books as one of six indigenous writers to watch. Billy-Ray studies Indigenous art, literature, and film. This Wound is a World, published by Frontenac House, is his debut collection of poems.
In the words of this year’s jury, “Billy-Ray Belcourt’s debut poetry collection This Wound is a World comes as a punch to the gut, a cold shower, a knife to the temple. Each poem is a bracing call to attention. All of the jurors described the experience of reading these poems in physical terms—we could feel in our very bodies that Billy-Ray Belcourt is doing something original and vitally important. Raw, painful, honest, and real, This Wound is a World is a collection to be read and re-read. With searing intelligence, This Wound is a World announces an important new talent to the international poetry world. Welcome, Billy-Ray Belcourt.”
Also on the shortlist were Norma Dunning for Annie Muktuk and other stories, (University of Alberta Press), and Lisa Martin for Believing is not the same as Being Saved, (University of Alberta Press).
Visual Arts Alberta-CARFAC is also pleased to announce the winner of the Eldon & Anne Foote Edmonton Visual Arts Prize. The winner of the 7th annual Eldon + Anne Foote Edmonton Visual Arts Prize is Gillian Willans (nominated by Heather Hamel, Scott Gallery). Gillian Willans received a cheque for $10,000.
The Eldon + Anne Foote Edmonton Visual Arts Prize was established with the generous support of the Eldon + Anne Foote Fund at Edmonton Community Foundation and in partnership with the Edmonton Arts Council and Visual Arts Alberta Association. This Visual Arts Prize celebrates the brilliance of Visual Artists in Edmonton.
