2025 Contest Winners
MRB Poetry Award Contest
Judged by Tolu Oloruntoba
MRB Poetry Prize:
Sean Howard
Main-à-Dieu , NS"taken leaves"
i. addresses (bras d’or triptych) irish cove, wind cuts slate turf, curl & fall of chalk * potlotek: no can- adian flags, hang a red dress * soldiers cove: chalked sign, honey and beach- glass, sand after rain For full poem, check out our summer 2026 issue coming out in July 2026!
irish cove,
wind cuts
slate turf, curl
& fall of
chalk
*
potlotek: no can-
adian flags, hang
a red dress
*
soldiers cove: chalked
sign, honey and beach-
glass, sand after
rain
For full poem, check out our summer issue coming out in July 2026!
Sean Howard is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Overlays: Scored Poems (Gaspereau Press, 2025). His poetry has been widely published in Canada, the US, UK, Ireland, and elsewhere, and featured in The Best of the Best Canadian Poetry in English (Tightrope Books, 2017). Sean is a peace researcher and activist, and adjunct professor of political science at Cape Breton University.
MRB Poetry Prize Honourable Mention :
Pamela Dillon
Conestogo, ON"Caesura"
Cock your ear— by the earth’s rotation blessed blue persists in requiem we can’t keep our minds from take-off unhinged at the reflection unfixable sorrows and letters too long to send— recriminations bolt the door, go ahead! Unmake the bed, on difficult afternoons thoughts at play in ruins throw dice for possibilities, there’s got to ...
by the earth’s rotation
blessed blue persists in
requiem we can’t keep our
minds from take-off
unhinged at the reflection
unfixable sorrows and
letters too long to send—
recriminations bolt the door,
go ahead! Unmake the bed,
on difficult afternoons
thoughts at play in ruins
throw dice for possibilities,
there’s got to be one day
that doesn’t spoil the milk
For full poem, check out our summer issue coming out in July 2026!
Pamela Dillon lives in Ontario. Pamela is a writer, poet, and creative writing graduate from U of T. Pamela's publications can be found on literary websites and in print journals including The New Quarterly, The Humber Literary Review, Room Magazine, the Globe and Mail, Atlanta Review, New Millennium Writings and Prism. She is currently working on a collection of short stories and her latest poem.
MRB Fiction Contest
Judged by Shashi Bhat
MRB Fiction Prize:
Annick MacAskill
Halifax, NS"With Friends"
Anna’s plan is going to work. Her mother is a lopsided snail on the couch, a heap of dirty laundry unto herself, all sweats and stained Muskoka tee, empty Coors Light cans at her feet in a row, tidier than she is. Eloise sold the station wagon last year, too broke to pay for new ...
Anna’s not going to Sarnia this time. Saturday night, a week before grad, she’s headed all the way to London for a concert in the east end, an area she blurrily remembers visiting a handful of times, back when her father still came to collect her for the occasional weekend visit.
This trip has nothing to do with her father. It also has nothing to do with Armon, her fresh ex-boyfriend, or Tia, her technically-still-going best friend. Maybe Tia is just as guilty as Armon for what happened, but Anna would never ditch a girlfriend the way she would a guy. She has her principles.
Check out the full story in our summer issue, out in July 2026!
Annick MacAskill is a writer based in Kjipuktuk (Halifax, Nova Scotia), in Mi’kma’ki. She is the author of four books of poetry, including Shadow Blight (Gaspereau Press, 2022), winner of the Governor General’s Award, and Votive (Gaspereau Press, 2024). Her fiction has appeared in journals such as Canthius, Plenitude, The Ampersand Review, and EVENT, and has been long listed for the CBC Short Story Prize and shortlisted for a National Magazine Award.
MRB Fiction Prize Honourable Mention:
Anne Baldo
Windsor, ON"This is Your Sign to Leave Him"
(2025) When I heard Travis was out of rehab and back in town, I wanted to foxtrot right back into his life, astonish him the way Gatsby dazzled Daisy, silk shirts and gold rings. I hesitated, but not sufficiently. Maybe we’d been guided by love, but our hearts were broken compasses, maps held upside down. ...
When I heard Travis was out of rehab and back in town, I wanted to foxtrot right back into his life, astonish him the way Gatsby dazzled Daisy, silk shirts and gold rings. I hesitated, but not sufficiently. Maybe we’d been guided by love, but our hearts were broken compasses, maps held upside down. Or maybe it hadn’t been love, like his devoted cousin, Lalie, my terrible best friend, always said. Maybe it was always obsession.
How could you tell you were obsessed, I mused, going through my bedroom drawers for my old La Senza water bra. I guess the test for obsession would be this: if you could choose who became the object of your obsession would you still choose that person? And if you say yes you're obsessed and if you say no then you’re not, you’re not really.
Check out the full story in our summer issue, out in July 2026!
Anne Baldo lives in Windsor, Ontario. Previous writing has appeared in carte blanche, West Trade Review, Qwerty, the short story collection Morse Code For Romantics (Porcupine's Quill, 2023) and the forthcoming novel, "One Day, Hard and Clear" (Dundurn Press, 2026).
MRB CREATIVE NON-FICTION CONTEST
Judged by Basma Kavanaugh
MRB Creative Non-Fiction Prize Winner:
Ken Wilson
Regina, SK"The Bear on the Path to Tofino"
I’m striding down Rainforest Drive in Ucluelet just after seven a.m., munching on an apple, listening to the crows and the robins. The sky is bright after yesterday’s drizzle. Salal, huckleberry, and horsetail—I’m giving the plant identification app on my phone a workout already, wondering what grows here, so unfamiliar to a visitor from the ...
What a profusion of life is here, even after I get to Peninsula Drive, the town’s main street, where the noise of traffic and road construction muffles the birds. Not all of them: nothing can mute one song, a spiral of liquid notes looping skyward. I’ve heard that song before but have no idea which bird creates it, and Merlin, my phone’s bird identification app, can’t identify the singer. I put my phone in my pocket and look around. There is so much colour in this place: giant black slugs crossing the path, pink and white foxgloves, bright red Pacific rhododendrons, the bell-shaped white and pink flowers of salal, blue flag irises, a striped black-and-yellow bee floating between white thimbleberry flowers. Yellow broom is everywhere—invasive, yes, but gorgeous. A crew arriving at their job site slides into their battered tan work boots and orange safety vests. Despite the exhaust from passing SUVs, the air smells fresh and greenly alive. I hear the song of a hermit thrush. Soon it’ll be warm enough to take off my lemon-yellow jacket and stow it inside the small backpack that contains my lunch—energy bars, fruit, a sandwich from the supermarket—and my water.
Check out our summer issue for the full story, out in July 2026!
Ken Wilson is lives on Treaty 4 territory in oskana kâ-asastêki (Regina, Saskatchewan), where he is an assistant professor in the Department of English & Creative Writing at the University of Regina. His first book, Walking the Bypass: Notes on Place from the Side of the Road, appeared in 2025; his second, "Walking Well," will appear in 2026.
MRB Creative Non-Fiction Prize Honourable Mention:
Rowan McCandless
Winnipeg, MB"It Is What It Is"
1. I get a rare text from my brother. This is how my family communicates. So, Michael’s in the hospital. He’s got terminal cancer. The doctors say he has days, weeks, maybe months to live. I text back. Would he be up for a visit? Your response. Idk. I guess so. 2. My family reunions ...
I get a rare text from my brother. This is how my family communicates.
So, Michael’s in the hospital. He’s got terminal cancer. The doctors say he has days, weeks, maybe months to live.
I text back. Would he be up for a visit?
Your response. Idk. I guess so.
2.
My family reunions take place in hospital corridors, funeral parlours and cemeteries. Parlour—it conjures such old-world sensibilities. It’s derived from the Old French parloir or parler, meaning to speak. Historically, it was a space set aside for conversation if one was wealthy enough to afford such a luxury. Parlour. I picture overstuffed furnishings covered in chintz, flocked floral wallpaper, and ornate gilded mirrors set atop solid marble fireplace mantels. A room in which prim and proper women with perfect posture engage in polite conversation over steaming cups of Darjeeling, saying things like, “Oh, darling. How charming. Will that be one lump or two?”
Man, Michael, the lumps our families have been taking lately.
Parlour, the r’s rrrrrrroll off my tongue, the vestigial remnants of high school French class. Je parle. Tu parles. Nous parlons. We speak, but now, after so many years apart, I don’t know what to say to my cousin, especially since his recent terminal cancer diagnosis.
For full story, check out our summer issue, out in July, 2026!
Rowan McCandless is a Black and biracial woman living and writing with a disability from Treaty One territory in Winnipeg. A 2022 Governor General’s finalist in nonfiction, McCandless is the author of Persephone’s Children: A Life in Fragments (Dundurn Press, 2021). She is an award-winning writer in nonfiction and fiction. Rowan is a sought-after speaker and workshop presenter on creative nonfiction and experimental forms and is currently completing a speculative short story collection. Follow at rowanmccandless.com.