ReLit Award Winners Announced

The ReLit Awards were announced this week, focusing on the best works published by independent presses in Canada. The winning 2016 titles were chosen from formidable shortlists in three prize categories. Here they are:

Novel: Carellin Brooks for One Hundred Days of Rain (Bookthug)

Short Fiction: Kevin Hardcastle for Debris (Biblioasis)

Poetry: Sue Goyette for The Brief Reincarnation of a Girl (Gaspereau Press)

Each winner will receive the unique ReLit ring, designed by Newfoundland artist Christopher Kearney, with "four moveable dials, each one struck with the entire alphabet, for spelling words."

The ReLit Awards were founded in 2000 by writer and filmmaker Kenneth J. Harvey, in an effort to bring recognition to excellent literary works that may have been overlooked by major monetary prizes.

Other nominees included Giller prize contender Anakana Schofield, Trillium Award finalists Damian Rogers, Lynn Crosbie, and Robert Hough, and lauded emerging writers such as Daniel Scott Tysdal, Jess Taylor, and Jon Chan Simpson.