Rita Wong Wins the Latner Griffin Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize!

We're thrilled to announce that Rita Wong, the author of poetry collections  monkeypuzzle, sybil unrest, undercurrent, beholden, and forage has won the Latner Griffin Writers' Trust Poetry Prize. The $60,000 prize is awarded annually to a Canadian poet in mid-career who has published at least three collections of poetry that demonstrate mastery of the art. Wong was selected by a three-member, independent judging panel comprised of Julie Pellissier-Lush, Ayaz Pirani and Laisha Rosnau.

About Wong's work, the judges write:

"Rita Wong’s immediate and necessary poetry takes the breath away. Wong is a poet of total commitment. Her poetry lives on the page, and she sometimes claims the margins as well. We can feel her heart in her words in ways that are both playful and blunt, razor-sharp and lyrically beautiful. Frankly political and decolonial, Wong accompanies her warrior’s poetry with intense meditations on heritage and ecology, often in the same moment. Wong’s body of work is remarkable, transformative, and inspiring."

Rita Wong is a poet and scholar whose writing focuses on ecological justice and decolonization. She has won the 2008 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize and was the 2011 Canada Reads Poetry champion. Wong also won the Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award from the Asian Canadian Writers’ Workshop. She is an associate professor in critical and cultural studies at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. She lives on the unceded Coast Salish territories, also known as Vancouver.

The Latner Griffin Poetry Prize is sponsored by the Latner Family Foundation and Scott Griffin.