Mark Bourrie, the winner of the 2019 RBC Taylor Prize, has selected Simone Dalton as this year’s recipient. The RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award was established to recognize and help a published early career Canadian author who is working on a first draft of a new manuscript, preferably but not limited to literary nonfiction. In a press release, Mark explained his choice:
“Simone Dalton is a vibrant new voice who has already shown readers some of her tremendous promise. Five talented, bright, charismatic writers were introduced to RBC Taylor Prize finalists and all of them will soon become well-known to Canadian readers. Simone will now have some financing to finish a very powerful, emotional work of non-fiction. Her experiences, so varied, adventurous and intense, give her the emotional depth to be a great writer. As well, her kindness, humour, and open-mindedness will make her work so very readable.”
Simone Dalton, a Trinidadian-Canadian writer currently living in Boston, earned an MFA from the University of Guelph, where she received the Constance Rooke and Board of Graduate Studies Research Scholarships. Named by Room Magazine in 2018 as one of the “20 Black Writers to Read All Year Round,” her work has been published in The Unpublished City: Volume I, and in the anthology, Black Writers Matter. In 2019, her inaugural short play, VOWS, debuted at Soulpepper as part of RARE Theatre’s production, Welcome to My Underworld. She is now working on her first memoir. Simone is represented by Samantha Haywood.
To see the full press release, please visit: http://www.rbctaylorprize.ca/