Two University of Guelph alumni have made the Governor General’s Literary Awards shortlist for works of poetry and theatre.
Robert Chafe, a playwright and graduate of U of G’s MFA program in creative writing, is a finalist for the second time for his recent work, Everybody Just C@lm the F#ck Down, a play that looks at the aging body, mid-life anxiety and how to exist with life’s unknown, published by Playwrights Canada Press.
Chafe, originally from Newfoundland, won the 2010 Governor General’s Literary Award for his work, Afterimage.
David Bradford, an editor based in Tioh’tia:ke (Montreal), is a finalist for his debut poetry collection, Dream of No One but Myself, an exploration of race, family, trauma and abuse published by Brick Books.
Bradford, also a graduate of U of G’s MFA program, also made the 2022 shortlists for the A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the Griffin Poetry Prize.
“I am delighted but not surprised to see two of our Master of Fine Art in Creative Writing alums on the Governor General’s Literary Awards shortlist,” said Dr. Samantha Brennan, dean of the College of Arts. “Our faculty are world leaders in their creative disciplines and our students are committed to their craft. It is a pleasure to see our mission to support unfettered creativity come to such fruition in our grads.”
The Governor General’s Literary Awards were created in 1936 to recognize Canada’s best English and French-language books across fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, young people’s literature and translation.
The awards promote Canadian literature while encouraging Canadians to read, according to the Canada Council for the Arts. The winners – awarded $25,000 – will be announced Nov. 16, 2022.