JUDGES
Roo Borson was born in California but has lived in Canada since the mid-1970s. She completed a Master of Fine Arts at the University of British Columbia in 1977.
Her publications include a triptych of poetry collections: Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida (2004), Rain; road; an open boat (2012), and Cardinal in the Eastern White Cedar (2017). She also co-authored the collaborative prose poem memoir Box Kite (2016) with Kim Maltman. Borson has given readings across the United States, Canada, and Australia, and her work has appeared in numerous anthologies, including The New Oxford Book of Canadian Verse, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, The Norton Introduction to Literature, and The Morningside Papers.
She has received many accolades for her work, including the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2004 and the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2005 for Short Journey Upriver Toward Oishida. Borson has also served as writer-in-residence at Western University, Concordia University, Massey College at the University of Toronto, and Green College at the University of British Columbia.
She lives in Toronto and is a member of the collaborative performance poetry ensemble Pain Not Bread, with Kim Maltman and Andy Patton.
Shane Neilson is a poet and physician from New Brunswick. His verse novel The Reign, about a queer deer and an intellectually disabled man, will be published by Goose Lane Editions in 2025. His poetry has appeared in Poetry Magazine, Prairie Schooner, Magma, and Literature and Medicine. He was shortlisted for the Trillium Book Award for Complete Physical (Porcupine's Quill, 2010) and won the Hamilton Book Award for Dysphoria (Porcupine's Quill, 2017).
Neilson is also active in the field of medical humanities. With Alan Bleakley, he co-authored Poetry in the Clinic (Routledge, 2021), the first scholarly monograph on poetry and medicine, and co-edited The Routledge Handbook of Poetry and Medicine (2024).
Martina Evans is an Irish poet, novelist, and teacher. She is the Books Critic for The Irish Times and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. Before turning to literature full-time, she worked as a radiographer for 15 years. She has taught creative writing at Birkbeck, University of London, and at the City Literary Institute in London.
Evans is a Royal Literary Fund Advisory Fellow and was Children's Book Editor at The Irish Post from 1998 to 2009. She has published nine poetry collections and three novels, earning multiple awards including the Betty Trask Award, the Arts Council England Award, the International Premio Piero Ciampi Prize for Poetry, and the Pigott Poetry Prize.