Writing competition returning to SAAG

By Greg Bobinec
Alta Newspaper Group – Lethbridge

The Southern Alberta Art Gallery has announced the return of the ninth annual SAAG Writing Prize, a writing competition that encourages and recognizes the work of emerging arts writers in Alberta and Black Indigenous People of Colour+ (BIPOC) writers within Canada.

This year, SAAG is introducing the Aruna D’Souza Arts Writing Prize (BIPOC+ Arts Writing), which was named after D’Souza who is the guest juror this year. D’Souza writes about race in modern and contemporary art, intersectional feminists and how museums shape the views of each other and the world. Her most recent book, “Whitewalling: Art, Race and Protest in 3 Acts,” was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times. She is currently editing two forthcoming volumes, “Making It Modern: A Linda Nochlin Reacher,” and “Lorraine O’Grady: Wiring in Space 1973-2018,” and is a co-curator of the upcoming retrospective of Lorraine O’Grady’s work, Both/And, which will open in March 2021 at the Brooklyn Museum.

People can apply for the SAAG Writing Prize competition in a few different categories including the Arts Writing prize, which is a long-form text, critical essay, and exhibition review. Alberta-based arts writers are eligible for this category. The prize for this category is $250 while also having their writing published online in Galleries West art magazine.

The SAAG Poetry & Prose prize is a long-form text, fiction and non-fiction poetry and experimental writing. The prize for this category is $250 and a Gushul Writers Cottage residency for a southern Alberta arts writer for the month of November.

The Aruna D’Souza Arts Writing Prize is an open format category of arts writing in any style, long or short form, awarded to an author who self identifies as Black, Indigenous or a Person of Colour. The prize for this category is $1,000 and the winner will have their writing published online with Canadian Art.

All submissions will be included in the SAAG Arts Writing Prize Reader 2020, printed in-house at SAAG. All contest participants are invited to attend the Writing Prize Reception on Oct. 1. At the time of entry, writers must be at least 18 years of age, be residents of Alberta, and have fewer than five pieces of writing published in a nationally distributed magazine. Submissions must be in by Sept. 13, to cfaulkner@saag.ca.

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