News

2024 Constance Rooke CNF Prize Winner: Marcel Goh

Congratulations to Marcel Goh, winner of the 2024 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize. His entry, “Lanterns,” was chosen by final judge Gloria Blizzard.

Marcel Goh will receive the $1,250 prize and publication in our winter 2024 issue #229!

Here's what Gloria Blizzard had to say about the winning piece: “Lanterns” is a finely crafted intergenerational tale. It is also a blistering yet compassionate portrait of a man, interwoven with the lives of family members who experience both his love and his ferocity. This essay reveals the emotional complexities of care, and provides a window into the impact of war, trauma, and of patterns that travel through a family system. Through its intimate cultural specificities it reveals the universal—the lives of women and children, and the challenges of the aging human body under siege. A beautiful work.

Marcel Goh

 

Marcel Goh was born in Singapore and moved to Canada when he was five years old. He spent most of his childhood in Leduc, Alberta before serving two years of military service as an infantryman in the Singapore Armed Forces. Subsequently, he relocated to Montreal, Quebec, where he still resides. He is a founding co-editor of the literary magazine Ahoy. His writing has appeared in Existere, The Prairie Journal, and Ricepaper. His short story “The Vigil” was selected for inclusion in Best Canadian Stories 2025 (Biblioasis). Marcel has also published several academic papers in the fields of probability and combinatorics. He is currently pursuing a PhD in mathematics at McGill University.


Keep an eye out for an interview with Marcel on his CNF Prize win in our January 2025 newsletter.


Gloria Blizzard

 

Gloria Blizzard, a Black Canadian woman of multiple heritages, is an award-winning writer and poet. Her work has received The Malahat Review's Open Season Creative Nonfiction Award, has been nominated for the Queen Mary Wasafiri Life Writing prize, and the Pushcart prize. Additional essays, poetry, reviews and poetry have been published in World Literature Today, Wasafiri International Contemporary Writing, The Humber Literary Review, Musicworks, cbc.ca, byblacks.com, and other publications. Her work was also listed amongst top music writing in 2022 by Invisible Press. Gloria holds a Master of Fine Arts in creative nonfiction from the University of King’s College. Her book of essays Black Cake, Turtle Soup, and Other Dilemmas is published by Dundurn Press.

 

Finalists for the 2024 Constance Rooke Creative Nonfiction Prize:

Adèle Barclay, "Perhaps a Wolf & a Lamb"
Kim Fahner, "Grouse"
Alana Friend Lettner, "Little Beauty"
Allice Legat, "Da Capo al Fine"
Deborah Ostrovsky, "Wrong Address"
Sina Queyras, "Tipping Point, 1985"
Daniel Uncapher, "Queer Southerners"

Thank you to Gloria Blizzard for judging, and to all entrants for your ongoing support of our literary contests!