Writing Contest Awards 2006 Winners

• Winners
• About the Authors
• From kc dyer, Contest Coordinator (new page)

Anthologies are still available for sale for $10 plus shipping. Please email contest@siwc.ca stating how many anthologies you want and where to ship them to. kc dyer will get back to you with the total cost.

2006 Winners

[top]

About the Authors

Henry Beissel
H.B. is an poet, playwright, fiction writer, essayist, editor and translator, who has published more than 30 books. His work has been translated into many languages. He is founder and past director of the Creative Writing program at Concordia University in Montreal. He now lives with his wife Arlette Franciere in Ottawa.

Gillian Derksen
New Westminster writer Gillian Derksen has written two short novels for children. She is about to embark on a third for a young adult audience. Ms Derksen also writes occasional articles, essays, and poetry.

Daniela Bouneva Elza
Daniela Bouneva Elza is a poet and rogue scholar. She lives in Vancouver with her husband and two children and is currently working on two collections of poems. Most recently her work was published in Quills, and is forthcoming this fall in Room of One’s Own.

Amy Dupire Jones
Amy currently lives in Starkville, Mississippi, the Land of the Boll-Weevil. She teaches online and manages to write fiction for young people when she’s not chasing her three children around the house or suffering from morning sickness, meaning, she writes in her sleep. Several of her works, including a contemporary YA and a middle-grade fantasy novel, are being shopped by her agent, Caryn Wiseman of Andrea Brown Literary Agency.

Ray Jones
Ray Jones was born in England and has lived in Canada since 1968. He is a former Globe and Mail news editor who now works for Canada Post.

Katherine Lawrence
Katherine Lawrence writes poetry and short stories from her home in Saskatoon. Her publications include two collections of poetry, both from Coteau Books: Ring Finger, Left Hand (2001), which won a Saskatchewan Book Award, and Lying To Our Mothers (2006). A short story titled “Split-ends” was published by JackPine Press (2005) as a chapbook.

Gillian Lockitch
A battered red and black notebook with 60 poems and a short story bears witness that Gillian Lockitch was a prolific writer (with much neater handwriting than her present scrawl) at age twelve. Marriage, motherhood and medical school dried up her literary creativity and specialty training in laboratory medicine and the challenge of medical research focused her attention on science. Through 25 years in medical practice in Vancouver and as a professor at UBC her published writing comprised scientific publications and reviews. Five years ago Gillian began part-time study for an arts degree at UBC, obtaining a B.A. in English Literature in 2005. During this time she started to write stories and poetry again. Currently she writes an on-line theatre column, /Rants, Raves and Reviews/ and sees as many plays as she can fit into her week. She is taking early retirement from medicine to work full time on her writing and is working on two non-fiction books, poetry and a novel.

Janet Oakley
Janet Oakley grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA, and steadily worked her way west after college in Kalamazoo, Mich. After meeting her husband in Honolulu, she moved to Bellingham, WA where they raised three sons. Upon his sudden death, her love of writing took hold not only as a passion, but also as a release. She has been published in various magazines, anthologies, and other media including the Cup of Comfort series and Historylink.org, a “cyperpedia of Washington State history.” She writes social studies curricula for schools and historical organizations, demonstrates 19th century folkways, and is the curator of education at Skagit County Historical Museum in LaConner, WA. Her historical novels, The Tree Soldier set in 1930s Pacific NW and The Jossing Affair set in WW II Norway were Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest finalists.

Patricia Smekal
Patricia Smekal loves words, avocadoes, her home on Vancouver Island, and Australian pelicans. Her micro-mini books, Grief ... feeling your way through, and Some Reflections on Being There were published in 1996 and 1997. Her poetry has won a number of prizes across Canada, and has been selected for publication in several anthologies, newsletters and chapbooks.

Diane Smith
Balancing Against the Wind, a novella, was recognized in the ‘finalist’ category at the William Faulkner/William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition for 2006. The memoir, “The Dance of Life” placed first in Canada with the Ottawa Valley Writers’ Guild for the 2005 competition and was published in The Grist Mill, Winter of 2005. Ms. Smith’s poem, “Foreign Turn,” was featured in The Binnacle at the University of Maine in the winter of 2006. “Mon Ami” flash fiction, placed in the honorable mention category for 2006 with The Binnacle at the University of Maine and will be published in the winter of 2007. She has won several awards for poetry. Diane Smith has worked for seventeen years in the field of child welfare in Minnesota as a social worker.