Hello again readers and happy autumn!
For this year’s Creative Non-Fiction Contest, we had the honour of working with Gabrielle Drolet as a judge for our shortlist (read anonymously)! In this judge’s essay, she discusses our three winning pieces: “Songs for Linda” by Carrie Mac, “The Mouth Keeps Score” by Aldona Dziedziejko, and “The Dying Spirit That Carries Me” by Eliana Rose Swerdlow. You will soon be able to read the winning piece in our upcoming general issue, and both runner-ups on our website.
Thanks again to Gabrielle and to everyone who submitted to this contest! Lastly, congratulations to our winners and shortlisted writers!
Sincerely,
Megan Horsthuis
Judge’s Essay: Gabrielle Drolet
Reading each of the seven shortlisted essays felt like such a gift. While they’re all so different from one another, each piece generously pulled me into its world, and allowed me to briefly understand something intimate about the writer, ranging from an experience of grief to the frustration of navigating the healthcare system. I feel grateful for the openness with which each of these writers shared their stories, and amazed by the level of writing in each submission.
“Songs for Linda” will stay with me for a very long time. It’s rare for a writer to achieve so much in such a short piece of writing. In less than 2000 words, “Songs for Linda” tells the story of a childhood crush, a brutal string of murders, and the societal failings that allow for repeat-offenders to perpetrate violence against women and girls. Beyond its gripping subject-matter, the story is beautifully-told on a sentence level. The story grabbed me from its simple first line — “Allan George Foster was out on parole when he murdered my friend Linda Brewer” — and held me until its last words. Alongside grief and anger, there is so much love and tenderness in this story. As a result, the loss in the story feels so much heavier and more real. I haven’t been this moved by a piece of writing in a long time, and I’m eager to read more from this writer.
I’ve always loved essays that tell a story from an angle you don’t expect, finding a through-line that only that writer could have. “The Mouth Keeps Score” does exactly that. The essay opens on a lovely scene of a parent brushing their daughter’s teeth, and unravels decades of family history—spanning two continents, and immigration from Soviet Poland, and the experience of loss—all through stories about teeth. Teeth become a symbol of well-being and of economic class, but above all else, they’re a medium through which a parent takes care of their child. This is a lovely piece, and one that grapples with the past and the present in a way that feels truly unique to the writer.
Because all three prize-winning pieces are so different in style and tone, the similarities between them weren’t immediately obvious to me. Looking over my notes now, it’s clear that they all strike a balance between grief and love. They reflect on what the writers have lost with an enormous amount of care and specificity. In “The Dying Spirit That Carries Me,” the subject of this care is the writer’s Tía Peggy. This is a beautiful and well-told story about the difficulty of finding oneself, and of what we can learn from someone through their art.
GABRIELLE DROLET is a writer and cartoonist based in Montreal. Her writing has been published in the New York Times, the Globe and Mail, The Walrus, Teen Vogue, and more. Her essays on disability have been nominated for a Digital Publishing Award and won gold at the Canadian Online Publishing Awards. Her first book, LOOK MA, NO HANDS, was an instant national bestseller and a finalist for a Lambda Award. She holds an MFA in non-fiction from the University of Guelph. Her first novel is forthcoming Spring 2028.