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Noor Naga wins 2017 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers

Noor Naga (Katrina Afonso)

Noor Naga (Katrina Afonso)

The Writer’s Trust of Canada has named Canadian-Egyptian writer Noor Naga the winner of this year’s RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Naga received the $10,000 accolade for her poem The Mistress and the Ping” at a ceremony in Torontoon May 30.

The prize, which alternates each year between poetry and short fiction, supports writers under 35 who are unpublished in book form.

Poets Adèle Barclay, Stuart Ross, and Moez Surani, who served as this year’s jury, said in a statement:

“The Mistress and the Ping” is constructed from exhilarating, mile-a-minute prose poems that are fresh, provocative, and often funny. These visceral pieces take surprising hairpin turns, pulling the reader through proclamations, inquiries, and bursts of self-doubt. Noor Naga achieves all this with a language that is rich and sensory, and a visually rigid structure that counter-intuitively unfolds to allow a multiplicity of pacing and play.

Finalists Tyler Engström (after thoughts”) and Domenica Martinello (“All Day I Dream About Sirens”) each received $2,500. The winning and nominated poems, along with those of previous years, are available for free download at iTunes.com/BronwenWallace.