News

2014 Novella Contest Winner

Dora DueckThe Malahat Review congratulates Dora Dueck of Winnipeg, M.B., whose story "Mask" has won the 2014 Novella Prize.

Dora’s entry was chosen from 221 submissions by our three final judges, Pauline Holdstock (North Saanich), Greg Hollingshead (Toronto), and Ann Ireland (Toronto). Dora was awarded $1,500 in prize money, and her novella will be published in the Summer 2014 issue of The Malahat Review. Read our interview with Dueck here.

Of "Mask," the judges said: "[it] is a deftly written, deeply affecting account of the physical and psychological ramifications within one family struggling to live with the wounds inflicted by war. This is the work of an honest writer, who has handled sensational, painful material with insight and compassion."

Dora Dueck is the author of two novels and a collection of short stories, as well as various articles and reviews. Her novel, This Hidden Thing (CMU Press, 2010), won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards, and What You Get at Home (Turnstone, 2012) won the 2013 High Plains Book Award in the short fiction category. She lives in Winnipeg, and is currently trying to complete another novel.

Pauline Holdstock is an internationally published novelist, short fiction writer and essayist. Her 2011 novel, Into the Heart of the Country (Harper Collins), was longlisted for the Giller Prize and included in the Globe & Mail top 30 list for fiction. Her historical novel, Beyond Measure (Cormorant), was shortlisted for  the Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the Victoria City Butler Book Prize, and was the winner of the B.C. Book Prizes Ethel Wilson Award for Fiction. Her novella, The World of Light Where We Live, was the 2006 winner of the Malahat Novella Prize. Pauline has taught creative writing at the Victoria School of Writing, the University of Victoria, and the Banff Centre. She lives on Vancouver Island and in France, where her next novel is set.

Greg Hollingshead has published six books of fiction: Famous Players, White Buick, Spin Dry, The Roaring Girl, The Healer, and Bedlam. He has won the Governor General's Award for Fiction, the Rogers Writers' Trust Prize, and has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Alberta and Director of the Writing Studio at the Banff Centre. From 2011 to 2012 he served as Chair of the Writers' Union of Canada. In 2012 he received the Order of Canada. He lives in Toronto with his wife Rosa Spricer.

Ann Ireland is the award-winning author of four novels. The most recent (February 2013) is The Blue Guitar. Her first novel, A Certain Mr. Takahashi, won the $50,000 Seal First Novel Award and was made into a feature film. This and other novels have been shortlisted for the Rogers/Writers Trust Fiction award; the Governor General’s Literary Award; the Ontario Trillium Award; and The W.H. Smith First novel award.

An interview with Dora Dueck on her Novella win will be published in the June edition of Malahat lite.

We would also like to congratulate the 2014 Novella Prize finalists:
Margaret Brodie, "Failure to Thrive"; Dana Bath, "Handle Like Eggs"; Jasmina Odor, "The Time of the Apricots"; Andrew Tibbetts, "Ernesto, My Love"

The Malahat Review’s Novella Prize runs every other year, alternating with the Long Poem Prize. The deadline for the next Novella Prize is February 1, 2016 (postmark date).