The Writers’ Guild of Alberta Golden Pen Award is presented to acknowledge the lifetime achievements of outstanding Alberta writers. Past recipients are W.O. Mitchell, Grant MacEwan, Rudy Wiebe, Myrna Kostash, Robert Kroetsch, Merna Summers, Aritha van Herk, Fred Stenson, George Melnyk, Alice Major, Betty Jane Hegerat, Greg Hollingshead, Candas Jane Dorsey, Cecelia Frey, Bob Stallworthy, Vivian Hansen, Chris Wiseman, Joan Crate, and Marty Chan.
Richard Harrison is a multiple-award-winning poet, essayist, and editor. His most recent book, On Not Losing My Father’s Ashes in the Flood, was awarded the 2017 Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry and the Stephan G. Stephansson Alberta Poetry Prize. His six books of poetry include Big Breath of a Wish, poems about his daughter’s acquisition of language, and Hero of the Play, poems in the language of hockey, launched at the Hockey Hall of Fame. He has published on literary criticism, cosplay, spoken word poetry, and mathematics. As well as hockey and literature (about which he co-edited the collection Now is the Winter), Richard also contributes to the scholarship on the superhero: with MRU colleague Lee Easton, he co-authored the book of essays, Secret Identity Reader (2010). Currently a Professor Emeritus at MRU, Richard’s scholarly and artistic efforts are focused on the teaching of writing and on poetry as contributor to public dialogue and social change.
Comments from the WGA Golden Pen Committee:
Not only has Richard Harrison held space to voluntarily mentor emerging writers, he has gifted his audience with a sense that sharing creative work can be fun by using performative elements, and having an open spirit. His impact is felt in his body of work, but equally importantly, through his rippling effect on the writing community in Alberta.
The Golden Pen Award is supported by Aritha van Herk.