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  It is a Two-Fer Day for St Lucian Canadian poet Canisia Lubrin   By Stephen Weir   Oh what a day it has been for one of the country’s most successful poets.   Canisia Lubrin   has just   learned that she has won one of the world’s richest poetry prizes.  She also had been told today that she has won a Canada Council administered literary prize too!   37-year old  Canisia Lubrin is the Canadian winner of the 2021  Griffin Poetry Prize.  She will receive $65,000 in prize money for her latest book  The Dyzgraph x st .   The Prize describes  The Dyzgraph x st  as a    “spectacular feat of architecture called a poem …  it is about  contemporary capitalist fascism, nationalism and the climate disaster, where Jejune, the central figure, grapples with understanding their existence and identity.”   The Griffin Poetry Prize  was founded in 2000 to encourage and celebrate excellence in poetry.  This year 682 books of poetry, including 55 translations from 28 languages from 14 different countri

  Kei Kellough makes the shortlist for the Gleed Award Caribbean Canadian writers continue succeed even during these stay-at-home times By Stephen Weir Last May  Kaie Kellough  won the richest poetry prize in the land.  The Guyanese Canadian poet Kaie Kellough was awarded the annual $65,000 Griffin Poetry Prize for his poetry book,  Magnetic Equator.  Almost a year to the day Kellough has made the shortlist for  twenty-fourth annual Danuta Gleed Literary Award for his short story collection  Dominoes at the Crossroads .   The Writers' Union of Canada administers the Gleed Award and announced the shortlist of contenders earlier this month. The Award recognizes the best first collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2020 in the English language. The prize consists of cash prizes for the three best first collections, with a first prize of $10,000 and two additional prizes of $1,000. Five authors have made the shortlist.  In addition to Kellough; Frances Boyle (See

It happened today Canisia Lubrin one of three Canadian poets in the running for one of the world’s largest poetry purses, the Griffin Prize By Stephen Weir:   With each passing major literary prize, St Lucian Canadian poet  Canisia Lubrin  shows that her place is on the world’s literary stage.  Fresh on the heels of winning the $200,000 American Windham-Campbell Prize, the Whitby author has learned today that she is now in the running for Canada’s largest poetry prize. This morning,  Scott Griffin, the founder of  The Griffin Trust For Excellence In Poetry , announced the International and Canadian shortlists for this year’s prize. Three Canadians including Lubrin are in the running for the annual $65,000 Canadian poetry prize. The Griffin was founded in 2000 to encourage and celebrate excellence in poetry. The prize is for first edition books of poetry written in, or translated into, English and submitted from anywhere in the world. Every year the Griffin family gives out two prizes ;

$410,000 later Brand and Lubrin are still gobsmacked (and then some) AfroToronto.com  What do you say when you find out you have just on $205,000? For two Caribbean Canadian authors, Canisia Lubrin and Dionne Brand, when they learned via Zoom that each of them had just won one of eight Windham-Campbell Prizes, it was short and sweet.  “Wow” said Brand, and “this is thoroughly shocking,” echoed Lubrin. By Stephen Weir: On Monday, Yale University on March 22 announced the eight recipients of the 2021 Windham-Campbell Prizes. The writers, whose work explores matters both personal and political, were honoured for their literary achievement or promise. Each will receive $165,000 US ($205,000 Cdn) to support their work. Canadian Trinidad & Tobago Dionne Brand won for her fiction writing. Canadian St Lucia’s Canisia Lubrin was honoured for her poetry. Dionne Brand left “Through original and intensely moving work that challenges what we think we know about genre and style, these extraordi