The New Quarterly reaches for the top

From a New Quarterly press release

St. Jerome’s University’s resident literary magazine, The New Quarterly, is riding high this awards season. It has two stories (in a field of ten) short-listed for the National Magazine Award for Fiction: West coast writer Annabel Lyon’s novella-length “Palaces” and Newfoundland writer Kathleen Winter’s “You Can Keep One Thing.”

New Quarterly fiction editor Katia Grubisic’s poem “A List Before Departure” (first published in the Toronto magazine Taddle Creek) is also one of only five on the poetry short list. Grubisic published her debut collection, What if red ran out, to enthusiastic reviews this spring. She is the daughter of Vinko Grubisic, a professor in the University of Waterloo’s Department of Germanic and Slavic Studies. The winners will be announced at a June 6th gala.

Another New Quarterly editor, Amanda Jernigan, recently received the prestigious Master’s Thesis Award from the Northeastern Association of Graduate Schools in the category of Arts and Humanities for “Wholes and Parts (All Puns Intended): The Mereological Vision of Richard Outram’s Poetic Sequences.” Jernigan had long been an admirer of Outram, a Canadian poet whose work was characterized by an adventursome intellect and joyful wit, and had introduced his poetry to New Quarterly readers through a series of interviews and essays published before his death in 2005. … The award, given on a four year cycle, is open to students at all leading Eastern Canadian universities (Ontario to Newfoundland) and all Northeastern U.S. universities, including the Ivy League schools.

Two of The New Quarterly’s “Wild Writers” (a group of 20 writers the magazine singled out at their millennial celebration of the best of Canada’s story writers) have won the $15,000 Writers’ Trust Awards for a male and female writer in mid-career: The Marian Engel Award went to Kingston writer Diane Schoemperlen and the Timothy Findley Award to Newfoundland writer Michael Crummey. TNQ “Wild Writers” Caroline Adderson and Douglas Glover took the same awards last year.

The Matt Cohen Award in Celebration of a Writing Life went to P.E. I. writer David Helwig. Judges cited his recent memoir The Names of Things, his book-length poem The Year One (winner of the Atlantic Poetry Prize in 2004), and his novella The Stand In. The whole of The Stand In and excerpts from the other two were first published in The New Quarterly.

Rebecca Rosenblum, short-listed for the Journey Prize and winner of the Metcalf-Rooke Award for short fiction, will be featured in the magazine’s summer issue.

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Imprint brings home awards for journalism

Writers on Imprint, UW’s student newspaper, have brought home national and provincial journalistic honours.

In the Ontario Community Newspaper Association Awards announced in April, Andrew Abela and Margaret Clark placed first and third respectively in the Student News Writing category. Abela won for his article on last year’s protest-troubled Conrad Grebel interfaith forum, Clark for her reporting on the resignation of Sai Kit Lo, FEDS vice-president internal. Suzanne Gardner received an honourable mention in the same category. In the Best Student Feature Writing category, Brendan Pinto received honourable mention.

At a gala Canadian Community Newspaper Association Awards ceremony in Toronto last weekend, Abela (left) placed third in the Best Campus News Story category, while Mohammad Jangda (far left) placed third in the Best Campus Photography category.

Jangda and Abela are still students, Margaret Clarke is currently editor-in-chief of Imprint, and Brendan Pinto and Suzanna Gardner graduated in 2007.

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Senate and BoG elections, and other notes

Elections will be held May 20 to 22 for three new staff and faculty representatives on UW's governing councils.

• Staff elect a representative on the University's Board of Governors. Brief campaign statements are available online for the three candidates who are contesting the position: Keith Kenning (Co-op Education & Career Services), Drew Knight (Waterloo International / Office of Research), and Ross McKenzie (Mechanical & Mechatronics Engineering). Ballots will be mailed to full-time unionized staff members, but full-time non-union staff will vote online. The election runs through May 22.
• Arts faculty elect a representative to Senate. Brief campaign statements are available online for the three candidates who are contesting the position: Geoffrey Hayes (History), Robert Hiscott (Sociology), and Zinaida Gimpelevich (Germanic & Slavic Studies). All regular Arts faculty are eligible to vote online.
• Science faculty elect a representative to Senate. Brief campaign statements are available online for the two candidates who are contesting the position: John Flanagan (Optometry), Susan Lolle (Biology). All regular Science faculty are eligible to vote online.

As UW’s telephone services network continues to grow and change, Bruce Campbell, director of network services, announces its latest evolution. “As you know, IST is responsible for providing telephone services to the UW campuses. Currently, IST's Telephone Services unit is located within the Administrative Services group and consists of a telecommunications analyst, a departmental assistant, and switchboard attendants. Technical support and evolution of the telephone system is provided through the Network Services group, where there are network-telecommunications technical personnel and a senior technologist for computer telephony integration (Bruce Uttley). Bruce retires this year.

“Since telephone service has become increasingly network-centric, we have decided to bring our telephone service activities together in a single group within Network Services. I am pleased to announce that Jason Testart has accepted the new position of Manager, Telecommunications Services, effective June 2. Jason has been Technical Manager User Support, in CSCF, since 2003, and prior to that served as Senior IT Security Analyst at Ryerson University.”

Alternatives Journal, another UW-based magazine with a national profile, is calling for submissions for an issue with the theme: "a question of scale." "Is small always beautiful?" the press release asks. "Small-scale industry is often functional and sustainable, but sometimes it seems to be limited to a peripheral role.… Alternatives is looking for examples of successes and failures in artisanal mining, small-scale forestry, agriculture or other sectors in an attempt to discover whether, when and how small-scale and sustainable development are merry bedfellows." Deadline for submissions is May 28. Details are online.

Updating yesterday's news of the Attawapiskat residents evacuated to Waterloo: although some 250 evacuees were expected, in the end just 118 came to Waterloo, and are staying in the Ron Eydt Village residence. The remainder were flown to Cochrane, when improving weather allowed planes to land. So far, approximately 1,200 people living by the flooding Attawapiskat River in the James Bay area have been moved to temporary quarters across Ontario.

Denise Simpson retired on April 30 after 27 years of service at UW. Denise began working on campus in 1981 with Plant Operations as a janitor, and moved to Housing and Residences in 1986. Denise spent the past 20 years as a member of the cleaning crew at UW Place, formerly Married Student Apartments. Her career was celebrated by her colleagues and family at a reception on May 7 in Housing.

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