Inaugural Cedric Literary Award Winners Announced
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Irene Lynxleg is one of four winners of the inaugural Cedric Literary Awards.
Four unpublished writers of a certain age were each presented with a $3,000 award in front of a packed audience at a special reception held at the Oswego Hotel in Victoria on Saturday, November 21, 2015.
The winners of the inaugural Cedric Literary Awards are:
- Margitta Maud, 76, of Duncan for her creative non-fiction work “Out of Darkness;”
- Joel Scott, 75, of Chemainus for his work of fiction “Arrows Flight;”
- Irene Lynxleg, 75, a First Nations writer from Vancouver for her short story “Keesis’s Trimble Park Diary;”
- Susan Braley, 59, of Victoria for her poetry collection “The Imminence of Fracture.”
These four writers were chosen by a panel of judges from ten other finalists whose work was selected from 168 manuscripts submitted in the 2015 writing competition.
“With no history to draw upon, we’ve created a spectacular beginning to The Cedric Literary Awards,” said Peter Dale, Chairman of Betterthan50 and founder of the writing competition. “We have demonstrated what inclusiveness really means by embracing writers from every region of BC, including First Nations writers.”
Submissions to the 2015 Cedric Literary Awards competition were received from writers 50 years old and better from Pink Mountain to Langley, and from Fort St. James to Victoria. Plans for the 2016 competition are already underway, and it is hoped the competition will embrace French-speaking writers in coming years.
“This year’s competition has been inspirational for all of us, and I am extremely grateful to all of the participants for taking a leap of faith by sending us their work,” said Executive Director Veronica Osborn. “The next Call for Submissions will be issued February 1st, 2016, and I look forward to seeing even more entries next year."
