SOME WINNERS of Canadian short-story contests have gone on to enjoy illustrious careers: Yann Martel won the Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and 10 years later had a smash with Life of Pi. Janice Kulyk Keefer, right at the beginning of her publishing career, won the 1986 CBC Short Story Prize and went on to be shortlisted twice for the Governor General’s
Literary Awards and to publish an impressive run of fiction and nonfiction. Saleema Nawaz’s 2008 Journey Prize win certainly kick-started her career: she published her debut story collection, Mother Superior, that year and went on to publish the novels Bone Bre in 2013 and Songs for the End of the World in 2020.