2024: Lesley choyce
​Lesley Choyce is the author of several books of literary fiction, poetry, creative nonfiction and young adult novels. He teaches Creative Writing at Dalhousie and his books have been published in Danish, German, Spanish, French, Swedish and Slovenian. He has won The Dartmouth Book Award, The Atlantic Poetry Prize and The Ann Connor Brimer Award and has been short-listed for the Governor-General’s Award. He lives at Lawrencetown Beach, Nova Scotia where he surfs year round in the North Atlantic.
Past Judges
Daniel Scott Tysdal
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Daniel Scott Tysdal is a writer, teacher, and filmmaker. He is the ReLit Award-winning author of three books of poetry, the poetry textbook The Writing Moment: A Practical Guide to Creating Poems (Oxford University Press), and the TEDx talk, “Everything You Need to Write a Poem (and How It Can Save a Life).” Most recently, his short film Wave Form won Best Experimental Short at the Arizona Underground Film Festival and Frog Hollow Press published his chapbook, Mad Fold-In Poems. He teaches at the University of Toronto Scarborough.
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Ruth Panofsky
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Ruth Panofsky is a poet, writer, and editor. She is the award-winning author of three books of poetry: Radiant Shards: Hoda’s North End Poems (2020); Laike and Nahum: A Poem in Two Voices (2007); and Lifeline (2001). Her two-volume edition, The Collected Poems of Miriam Waddington (2014), received multiple awards, including the Canadian Jewish Literary Award. Her recent book, Toronto Trailblazers: Women in Canadian Publishing (2019), was nominated for a Heritage Toronto Book Award. She teaches at Ryerson University in Toronto.
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Alongside her son, Ruth Panofsky has produced a CBC radio show about his experience with Tourette Syndrome. Titled "Boy in Motion," you can listen to it here.
