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2009 Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction winner

Congratulations to third-year UVic student Eliza Robertson (Victoria, BC) on winning the 2009 Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction with her entry, “Ship’s Log.” The Far Horizons Award celebrates the achievement of emerging writers who have yet to publish their fiction in book form.

Robertson’s short story was published in our Fall 2009 issue (#167). Final judge Anne Simpson (Antigonish, NS) chose her story from over 110 entries. Of “Ship’s Log,” Simpson said: “Based on the premise of a child digging a hole to China, “Ship's Log” sets an imaginative vision against an ordinary, though complex, world. In evocative language that resonates with details, the writer develops a story of breadth and depth, one that reverberates beyond its pages.”

photo of Eliza Robertson

Eliza Robertson, winner of the 2009 Far Horizons Award for Fiction!

Eliza Robertson is a third-year Creative Writing and Political Science student at the University of Victoria. She has lived in Victoria for most of her life, but this summer finds her on the other side of the world – East Africa as it happens, not China – where she will volunteer with the Arusha Centre for Women and Children Development. When she is not reading, writing, and traipsing through Africa, she likes to dance – primarily jazz, ballet, and tap. “Ship’s Log” will mark her first publication.

Anne Simpson is the author of three books of poetry, Light Falls Through You, winner of the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and the Atlantic Poetry Prize; Loop, winner of the Griffin Poetry Prize and a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for Poetry; and, most recently, Quick, winner of the Pat Lowther Award. Her first novel, Canterbury Beach, was shortlisted for the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. In 1997 her short story “Dreaming Snow” shared the Journey Prize, and in 1999 she was awarded the Bliss Carman Poetry Award. Her most recent publication is The Marram Grass, a book of essays published by Gaspereau Press (2009). Simpson lives in Antigonish, Nova Scotia, where she helped establish the Writing Centre at St. Francis Xavier University.

The deadline for our next Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction will be May 1, 2011.

Previous Prize Winners