2022 Bridge Prize Winners and Main Jury
2022 Bridge Prize
The 2022 Bridge Prize winners
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Congratulations to Chido Muchemwa, from the University of Toronto, for winning the top prize of $7,500 for her short story If It Wasn't for the Nights. Her winning story can be found at: 
muchemwa_if_it_wasnt_for_the_nights.pdf
Congratulations to the three Finalists who each receive $1,000. The four winners also receive a gift card from Munro’s Books in Victoria, British Columbia. Munro's Books is one of the Bridge Prize sponsors.
Lily Scriven (York University) - Women in the Morning Light;
Eliza Ives (University of New Brunswick) - Office Story;
Tarini Fernando (University of Calgary) - Durian Days
2022 Jurors
Francesca Ekwuyasi
Francesca Ekwuyasi is a writer and multidisciplinary artist from Lagos, Nigeria. Her work explores themes of faith, family, queerness, consumption, loneliness, and belonging. Francesca's writing has been published in THIS Magazine, Winter Tangerine Review, Brittle Paper, Transition Magazine, the Malahat Review, Visual Art News, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, and GUTS Magazine. Her story Ọrun is Heaven was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize and her debut novel, Butter Honey Pig Bread for the 2020 Scotia Bank Giller Prize. She currently lives in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
Lisa Moore
Lisa Moore was born and raised in St. John’s Newfoundland, Canada and currently teaches creative writing at Memorial University. She has written three collections of short stories, Degrees of Nakedness and Open, and Something for Everyone, and three novels, Alligator, February and Caught, and a young adult novel called Flannery. Alligator and Caught, and her short story collection Open, were nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Her novel February was long listed for the Man Booker Prize and won CBC Canada Reads in 2013.
Waubgeshig Rice
Waubgeshig Rice is an author and journalist from Wasauksing First Nation on Georgian Bay. He has written three fiction titles, and his short stories and essays have been published in numerous anthologies. His most recent novel, Moon of the Crusted Snow, was published in 2018 and became a national bestseller. He graduated from Ryerson University’s journalism program in 2002 and spent the bulk of his journalism career at CBC. He is also a Juror for the 2022 Giller Prize. Waubgeshig lives in Sudbury, Ontario with his wife and two sons.
Bill Richardson
Bill Richardson lives in Vancouver and in southwest Manitoba in the rural municipality of Louise. He writes for children and adults. I Saw Three Ships: West End Stories, was published by Talonbooks in 2019. Forthcoming from Running the Goat Books and Broadsides is Hare B & B, with illustrations by Bill Pechet. He is a past winner of the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for Bachelor Brothers' Bed and Breakfast.
Joan Thomas
Joan Thomas’s 2019 novel, Five Wives, won the Governor General’s Award for fiction. Joan is the author of three previous novels: The Opening Sky, Curiosity, and Reading by Lightning. Her work has won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize, and the McNally Robinson Prize, and has been nominated for the Giller Prize, the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award, and a previous Governor General’s Award. In 2014, she was the recipient of the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Prize for a writer in mid-career. She lives in Winnipeg.
Sam Wiebe
Sam Wiebe is the award-winning author of the Wakeland novels, one of the most authentic and acclaimed detective series in Canada, including Invisible Dead ("the definitive Vancouver crime novel") and Cut You Down ("successfully brings Raymond Chandler into the 21st century"). Wiebe's other books include Never Going Back, Last of the Independents, and the Vancouver Noir anthology, which he edited. Wiebe's work has won the Crime Writers of Canada award and the Kobo Emerging Writers prize, and been shortlisted for the Edgar, Hammett, Shamus, and City of Vancouver book prizes. His original film/tv projects have been optioned, and his short stories have appeared in ThugLit, Spinetingler, and SubTerrain, as well as anthologies by Houghton-Mifflin and Image Comics.
Bridge Prize Editor – Shirarose Wilensky
The Bridge Prize is excited to announced that Shirarose Wilensky, an editor with the House of Anansi Press, will work with the winning author to complete a final edit of the winning short story.
Shirarose Wilensky works for House of Anansi Press from her home in Port Moody, BC. She attended Simon Fraser University’s Master of Publishing Program and has worked for Arsenal Pulp Press, Greystone Books, Douglas & McIntyre, and Harbour Publishing. In 2021, she won the Tom Fairley Award for editing Butter Honey Pig Bread by Francesca Ekwuyasi. Other bestselling and acclaimed books she’s edited include A Dream of a Woman by Casey Plett, Rebent Sinner by Ivan Coyote, Shut Up You’re Pretty by Téa Mutonji, and The Woo-Woo by Lindsay Wong. She acquires and edits literary fiction and narrative non-fiction, with a special interest in BIPOC, LGBTQ2S+, and debut writers.