RSVP Below by May 20 for “The Dave” Reception and Beyond Boundaries III Launch!
Dave Williamson is one of the founding members of the Manitoba Writers’ Guild and honorary patron of our Short Story Competition.
Open to writers across Canada! We actively encourage submissions from all writers who are 18+ years of age, including writers with disabilities; writers in the 2SLGTBQIA+ communities; BIPOC writers; and other under-represented communities.
Prizes
First Place
$1,000 CAD
Three-year complimentary membership*
Second Place
$600 CAD
Two-year complimentary membership*
Third Place
$400 CAD
One-year complimentary membership*
*Non-Manitoban residents receive Associate membership. Associate members have all the rights of membership excluding the rights to vote and to serve on the board.
Publication
By submitting your entry to this contest, you agree to give the Manitoba Writers’ Guild’s first North American eBook rights for six months from the date of publication, after which all rights revert to the author if your story is selected. Proceeds from the sale of Beyond Boundaries will be used to support future Manitoba Writers’ Guild writing competitions.
The three prize winners plus (up to four) honourable mentions will be published in the Manitoba Writers’ Guild Beyond Boundaries anthology.
2025 Judges
Michael Hutchinson
Michael Hutchinson is Swampy Cree from the Treaty 5 area and a member of the Misipawistik Cree Nation. During his early years, he fought forest fires, worked in an underground research mine, and did catering for rock concerts and movie shoots. As an adult, he has switched back and forth between the communications and journalism sides of the desk, hosting APTN National News for seven years, co-hosting CTV Morning Live Winnipeg, and working for numerous First Nation advocacy organizations from the national to the local level, including the Assembly of First Nations and the Manitoba Keewatinowi Okimakanak. He is currently the Communications Manager at the Manitoba First Nations Education Resource Centre. He wrote the Mighty Muskrats Mystery series to educate young Canadians, build pride in First Nation and impoverished youth, and create a better Canadian and First Nations relationship. He lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Zilla Jones
Zilla Jones, she/her, is an African-Canadian writer living on Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg.) She is a 2023 Journey Prize winner and has also won the Malahat Review Open Season award, Jacob Zilber award, Freefall short prose award, and GritLit festival award. She placed second in the Prairie Fire and Austin Clarke fiction prizes, and received Honourable Mention in the Room magazine short story contest. She has also been longlisted twice by the CBC short fiction prize and was a finalist in the Alberta Magazine Publishing awards. Her work appears in Prairie Fire, the Malahat Review, Prism International, Freefall, the Fiddlehead, the Puritan, Room, and The Journey Prize Stories. Zilla is also a busy criminal defence and human rights lawyer, anti-racism educator, singer, and mother to musical and athletic children.
Mitchell Toews
Mitchell Toews has placed stories in literary journals and anthologies since 2016. A four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, he has been a top finisher in numerous short story contests in Canada and the United States. A former longtime Steinbach resident, Mitch is the author of the collection of short stories, Pinching Zwieback (At Bay Press, 2023) which will be featured in the November Winnipeg Free Press/McNally Robinson Book Club. A debut novel set in the Manitoba “noireal” forest is underway. The author and his wife, Janice, live in their 1950 cabin in Manitoba’s Whiteshell Park and may be found on the lake, on the trails, or loose, in the wild air. More conveniently, catch him in his virtual habitats, Mitchellaneous.com, Facebook, X, and Instagram/Threads.
We actively encourage submissions from all writers who are 18+ years of age, including writers with disabilities, writers in the 2SLGTBQIA+ communities, BIPOC writers, mature writers, and other underrepresented communities.
Please follow the guidelines below, as every one of them is important to ensure your story is accepted and read.
- Submissions open Dec. 1, 2024.
- Submissions close Feb. 28, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. CST.
- The contest is open to Canadian citizens and permanent or academic residents.
- Stories must be between 2,500 and 4,500 words in any fiction genre.
- Stories must be submitted in Times New Roman, 12-point font, double-spaced, with one-inch margins, and first line indents.
- Include page numbers in the upper right-hand corner of your document with the story title in the header of each page.
- This is a blind judging contest. There should be no identifying information on the story document.
- Your submission must include:
- Your manuscript with its title, followed by the word count, with no other identifying information.
- All the information requested in the competition form below. Please ensure that the title of your entry on the form exactly matches the title on the front page of your submitted manuscript. Similarly, the word count must match exactly.
- Payment submitted through our website submission portal.
- NEW: Simultaneous submissions are allowed. Entries must be previously unpublished. Previously published includes both traditionally and self-published in print and e-format including all printed formats, ezines, blogs, online literature sites, and newsletters.
- All entries must be original works by the entrant. Entries must be organically created, that is, written by the author. Stories generated by, written with, or influenced by AI, will be disqualified. The use of third-party poetry, song lyrics, characters, or another person’s universe, without written permission, will result in disqualification.
- Your document must be sent in .doc, .docx, .rtf, or .txt format. No other file types will be accepted.
- The judges’ decisions are final.
- All entries must be submitted through the link below on or after Dec. 1, 2024. The submission deadline has been extended to Feb. 28, 2025 at 11:59 p.m. CST.
If you have questions or want further clarification, email . DO NOT send entries to this address. They will not be accepted.
Write the best story you can, follow these guidelines, and we wish you all the best of good fortune. We have judges eager to read what you have written. Please remember the words of one of our lead judges from both last year and this year: “Everyone who enters is a winner, because you’ve had the courage and confidence to create and refine and hone as perfectly as you can a piece of writing for others to enjoy.”
Winners
First Prize
The Promise – Lisa Pollock, Calgary, Alberta
Second Prize
Canadian Cougars – Elle Qunmei Taylor, Grande Pointe, Manitoba
Third Prize
A Good Day on Clothes – Yvonne Kyle, Winnipeg, Manitoba
Honourable Mentions
Homeward Bound – Rowan McCandless, Winnipeg
Pies – Cheryl Parisien, Winnipeg
The Carnival of Bones – Margaret Spratt, Winnipeg
Queen of the Railroad Bridge – Kathleen Vance. Gibson, BC
Judges
Raye Anderson
Raye Anderson is a Scots Canadian who taught Drama and ran Theatre and Community arts programs for many years, notably at Prairie Theatre Exchange in Winnipeg, in Ottawa, and Calgary.
Raye has been a resident of the Interlake since 2007 and presently lives in Gimli. Her first crime fiction novel, And We Shall Have Snow, was published by Signature Editions in 2020. It was shortlisted for Best New Crime Novel, 2021 for the Crime Writers of Canada, Awards of Excellence, and was also shortlisted for Best Softcover Fiction category of the WILLA 2021 Literary Awards.
The second book in the series, which features Sergeant Roxanne Calloway of the RCMP, occurs mostly in Winnipeg, in a fictional theatre company. Titled And Then Is Heard No More, it was published by Signature Editions in 2021, and was the Winnipeg Free Press Book Club choice for summer of 2022.
Raye returned to the Interlake as the setting for her third book, Down Came The Rain, published by Signature Editions in 2022. The fourth in the series, Sing a Song of Summer, was released July 2023 by Signature Editions this spring.
You can find Ray Anderson’s books here.
Lee Kvern
Lee Kvern is a Canadian author of short stories and novels. Her stories in 7 Ways to Sunday have garnered literary awards including the CBC Literary Prize. Afterall was selected for regional Canada Reads and nominated for Alberta Book Awards and the Ottawa Relit Award. Lush Triumphant finalist and recent Best of the Net nominee. Her work has been produced for CBC Radio and been published in numerous literary magazines across Canada and the US. She’s currently finished her fourth novel Catch You on the Flipside, an international thriller.
Zilla Jones
Zilla Jones, she/her, is an African-Canadian writer living on Treaty 1 territory (Winnipeg.) She is a 2023 Journey Prize winner and has also won the Malahat Review Open Season award, Jacob Zilber award, Freefall short prose award, and GritLit festival award. She placed second in the Prairie Fire and Austin Clarke fiction prizes, and received Honourable Mention in the Room magazine short story contest. She has also been longlisted twice by the CBC short fiction prize and was a finalist in the Alberta Magazine Publishing awards. Her work appears in Prairie Fire, the Malahat Review,
Prism International, Freefall, the Fiddlehead, the Puritan, Room, and The Journey Prize Stories. Zilla is also a busy criminal defence and human rights lawyer, anti-racism educator, singer, and mother to musical and athletic children.
Lauren Carter
Lauren Carter (she/her) is the author of five books including two poetry collections, two novels, and her latest, the short story collection Places Like These which was a Globe and Mail recommended read. This Has Nothing To Do With You, her last novel, won the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction at the Manitoba Book Awards, when she also earned the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writing. She lives on 1.4 acres within the homeland of the Metis Nation, on Treaty One territory, near Winnipeg, Manitoba, where she writes and runs a variety of writing retreats through her business Wild Ground Writing.
Trevor Greyeyes
Trevor Greyeyes has been a writer, journalist, poet, playwright, guitar player and all round bon vivant, minus the money.
A First Nation man who hails from Netley Creek First Nation.
As he takes his first steps into being recognized for entering his elderly years, Greyeyes looks forward to doing even more.
Winners
First Prize
Return to Chrysalis by Bruce Cinnamon
Second Prize
TEOTWAWKI by Rowan McCandless
Third Prize
Sketches by Gaylene Dutchyshen
Honourable Mentions
Legend of the Magpie: An Original Métis Story by C. Merle Klyne
The Other Side of the Map by Eleonore Schönmaier
The Redhead by Sharon McInnes
On The Edge of My Couch by Thila Varghese
Judges
Raye Anderson
Author of The Roxanne Calloway Mystery Series, finalist for the Best First Crime Novel (Crime Writers of Canada) and finalist for the WILLA Award in the Original Softcover Fiction category. Her second book in the series, And Then Is Heard No More (Signature Editions) was selected for the Winnipeg Free Press Summer Book Club (2022). A fourth book is planned for next year.
Frances Koncan
Writer-in-Residence at the Millennium Library (2022-23), was formerly Writer–Residence at the University of Manitoba Centre for Creative Writing and Oral Culture (2021). Of Anishinaabe and Slovene descent, she brings her knowledge of diverse cultures to her writing, winning the Best New Manitoba Play award at the Winnipeg Fringe (2016) and Best New Play award at the Toronto Fringe Festival (2018). Her most recent play premiered at the Royal Manitoba Theatre Centre in 2021.
Zilla Jones
Judged for the Malahat Review and is participating in the award-winning Millennium Library Program for young writers, sponsored by Creative Manitoba. She was a Sheldon Oberman Mentorship Program apprentice, mentored by Angeline Schellenberg, and is represented by a Canadian Transatlantic agent. Zilla won first place in the Malahat Review Open Season, Prism International Jacob Zilber award, FreeFall and GritLit festival awards, and was runner up in The Puritan Austin Clarke WRd and Prairie Fire fiction contest. A member of the Guild, her writing expertise and critiques are widely respected in our Writing Critique Circles.
Bob Armstrong
Winner of the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction (2022) for Prodigies and author of the weekly column, Paper Chase, in the Winnipeg Free Press. His most recently published short story appears in The Uncharted Territory issue of Prairie Fire (2022).
Program News
By Sharon Hamilton Thank you so much for the wonderful news tonight! I’m honoured! I felt overwhelmed and shocked in the moment, but I loved hearing excerpts from the other writers’ stories. I was also impressed by this hybrid event. I help organize similar events in my day job, so I know how much work goes on behind the scenes to have things run smoothly. I was telling the other writers on Zoom that the …
Choosing the best among many good stories is not so straightforward a task as one might imagine. Our three lead judges, Michael Hutchinson, Zilla Jones, and Mitchell Toews engaged in energetic discussions focusing on the craft of writing and the elements of fiction, ultimately deciding on the following seven stories for our shortlist. The finalists for “The Dave” 2025 are:(in alphabetical order) “The Opposite of Comforting” by Agata Antonow (Hamilton)“Tides” by Amber Fenik (Ottawa)“Chaiwali” by Sarah Israr (Toronto)“Wild …
April 18, 2025
“The Dave” Longlist Has Been Announced
We are thrilled to announce the longlist for this year’s David Williamson National Short Story Competition (aka “The Dave”). We received 125 entries, a steady growth over our first year with 96 entries, once again ranging from British Columbia to Nova Scotia. The judges have been busy reading this diverse range of stories and have made their selection. Names of the authors are being withheld until the short list is announced, but scan these tantalizing …
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