Windham-Campbell Prize, Winner OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, Winner OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature Poetry, Winner Griffin Poetry Prize, Winner Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, Winner Rebel Women Lit Caribbean Readers' Awards, Finalist Governor General's Literary Award for Poetry, Finalist Trillium Book Award for Poetry, Finalist Raymond Souster Award, Longlist Pat Lowther Memorial Award, Longlist Quill & Quire 2020 Books of the Year: Editor’s Picks CBC Best Canadian Poetry of 2020 Winnipeg Free Press Top 10 Poetry Picks of 2020 The Paris Review, Contributor's Edition, Best Books of 2020
The Dyzgraphxst presents seven inquiries into selfhood through the perennial figure Jejune. Polyvocal in register, the book moves to mine meanings of kinship through the wide and intimate reach of language across geographies and generations. Against the contemporary backdrop of intensified capitalist fascism, toxic nationalism, and climate disaster, the figure Jejune asks, how have I come to make home out of unrecognizability. Marked by and through diasporic life, Jejune declares, I was not myself. I am not myself. My self resembles something having nothing to do with me.
CANISIA LUBRIN’s books include Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst. Lubrin’s work has been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry, the Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Stars prize, and others. Also a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry and the Governor General's Literary Award, Lubrin has held fellowships at the Banff Centre, Civitella Ranieri in Italy, Simon Fraser University, Literature Colloquium Berlin, Queen’s University, and Victoria College at the University of Toronto. She studied at York University and the University of Guelph, where she now coordinates the Creative Writing MFA in the School of English & Theatre Studies. In 2021, Lubrin received a Windham-Campbell Prize for poetry, and the Globe and Mail named her Poet of the Year. Code Noir: Metamorphoses is her debut fiction, and includes stories listed for the Journey Prize (2019, 2020), Toronto Book Award (2018) and the Shirley Jackson Award (2021). Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin now lives in Whitby, Ontario, and is the poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart.
