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The Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction and the Edna Staebler Laurier Writer-in-Residence program are supported by an endowment established by writer and literary journalist Edna Staebler and administered by Wilfrid Laurier University.
The Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction is the only award of its kind for this genre offered in Canada. First awarded in 1991, it provides encouragement and recognition to a Canadian writer of a first or second published book. The award is valued at $10,000.
The winner of the 2022 award is Jillian Horton, M.D., for We Are All Perfectly Fine: A Memoir of Love, Medicine and Healing. In the book, Dr. Horton, a gifted internist, examines her drive to reverse her family’s experience of medical ineptitude while becoming physically and psychologically exhausted by her responsibilities as a doctor, teacher and mother. Her participation in a mindfulness retreat for healthcare workers gives her, quite literally, the breathing room she needs to reassess herself and her profession, shedding the cloak of the all-knowing physician to reveal the human being within and challenging readers to develop a more humane, balanced vision of healing. Members of the public are invited to attend the award ceremony on Thursday, Nov. 9 at Laurier's Waterloo campus, which will feature a lecture by Dr. Horton, book signing and reception with complimentary refreshments. All are welcome. Tickets are free but must be reserved ahead of time.
The Edna Staebler Laurier Writer-in-Residence program is a residency for Canadian writers. The length of the residency depends on year-to-year funding and local planning initiatives, but the rate per week is commensurate with Canada Council funding. If accommodation is needed, the successful applicant will live in Lucinda House, a century home close to Laurier's Waterloo campus, for the duration of the residency.
"If only there was some way of recording every precious, passing moment." – from Must Write: Edna Staebler's Diaries
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Award for Creative Non-Fiction
Writer-in-Residence Program