The Nelson and District Arts Council and Elephant Mountain Lit Fest request assistance in nominating emerging writers in West Kootenay communities for the 11th Annual Carver Award. The award, which comes with a $500 cash prize, will be presented at Elephant Mountain Lit Fest in September 2024.
Nominations must be for writers just starting in their careers who have had one to two books published, or an equivalent body of work published in anthologies or literary journals. The work must be creative, literary writing, including fiction, creative non-fiction, poetry, and writing for children and teens. Self-published authors are eligible. Nominees, who must reside in the West Kootenay, are judged using three criteria: quality of work, the strength of nomination, and community engagement.
Nominations must include name and contact information for both the nominator and the nominee, writing discipline (fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, teen, children’s, etc), titles of published works and their publishers, and a paragraph outlining the reason for the nomination.
Richard Carver was a lover of the arts and the Kootenays, and he was invested in the community. He was a mover and shaker on the board of the Nelson and District Arts Council, the primary sponsor of this award named in his honour. His daughter Jocelyn Carver, an arts lover herself, has continued the family’s generous support of this award.
Nominations close on Monday, July 15 at 5 p.m. and should be sent to richardcarveraward@gmail.com.
