TORONTO, July 11, 2024 /CNW/ - Nancy Huggett has won the 2024 RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award. For her winning submission, Revelation, she will receive a $3,000 cash prize and mentorship from a Canadian author.

A jury of Canadian writers, including Sharon Bala, Dimitri Nasrallah, and Sarmishta Subramanian, chose Huggett from 560 entries, nearly double the number of entries from the previous year.

"A clear cohesion emerges in this epic work, in the interplay of illness and healing, making and breaking, and in the delicate engagement with the religious theme implied in the title," reads the jury citation. "We were struck by the work's powerful emotional resonance and its brave exploration of a felt experience."

Nancy Huggett is a settler descendant who writes, lives, and caregives on the unceded Territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation (Ottawa, Canada). She collaborates with several writing groups, including Firefly Creative, Merritt Writers, Trailheads, not-the-rodeo poets, and Kairos. Her writing has been published in literary magazines, including American Literary Review, Event, Poetry Northwest, Prairie Fire, and The New Quarterly. At 66, she is the oldest person to win the RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award.

The jury also selected four finalists: Georgio Russell (Saltborne), Monica Nathan (Between Spaces), Hajera Khaja (The Rupture), and Tessa Swackhammer (A Man Called Evergreen).

Now celebrating its 11th anniversary, the RBC PEN Canada New Voices Award encourages new writing and provides a space for unpublished Canadian writers, aged 17 and over. Previous winners include Christine Wu, Fareh Malik, Em Dial and Deepa Rajagopalan.

The award is funded by the RBC Emerging Artists Program, which supports the arts and the role they play in building vibrant communities and strong economies. Since its inception, the program has supported over 35,000 emerging artists across the globe.

About PEN Canada

PEN Canada is a nonpartisan organization that celebrates literature, defends freedom of expression, and assists writers in peril at home and abroad. The English-language Canadian centre was founded in 1983 and is proud to be one of over 140 chapters of PEN International.

SOURCE Pen Canada