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Saunders on the Canadian National Magazine Awards

This sent in from Craig Saunders

At a gala ceremony on June 5, Sina Queyras won the National Magazine Award for poetry. The NMAs are Canada’s top prizes for magazine writing. The author of four books, including Teethmarks, Lemon Hound and the newly released Expressway, the Montreal poet won for “Her Dreams of the Expressway,” published in the Malahat Review.

The silver award went to Vancouver poet Jennica Harper for “Liner Notes,” published in Prism International. Honorable mentions went to Warren Heiti, Michael Lista, Peter Richardson, Barry Dempster, Sylvia Legris, Amy Dennis, Lorna Crozier and Jan Zwicky.

It was a banner night for the Malahat Review, which publishes out of the University of Victoria, British Columbia. The literary journal also won the gold and silver awards for fiction with stories by Andrew Tibbetts and D.W. Wilson, and a silver in the “personal journalism” category for “Bad Day” by Joel Yanofsky.

AlbertaViews was named magazine of the year. The Walrus won the most awards with five golds and a silver, followed closely by Toronto Life and explore, a small adventure travel magazine with an impressive history of good writing.

[editor's note: particular hip-hip-hoorays for Sina Queyras, a long-time blogger and friend of Eyewear's]

Craig Saunders is a Toronto-based writer and reviewer.

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