A Lethbridge local is one of the winners of the Writer’s Guild of Alberta 2022 literary awards. Rod Moody-Corbett won the Howard O’Hagan award for short stories with his piece Malady Head, published in Soft Punk Magazine.
Finalists represent excellence in literary work written by Alberta authors and published or created in 2020-21, according to a news release from the Writer’s Guild. It said juries deliberated on more than 300 submissions to select winners.
“Malady Head was beautifully constructed and lyrically written and took me back to summers at the beach; I became so lost in this story I would have happily kept reading,” reads the jury remarks. “The dialogue is precise, and the world is well-constructed; this story is an excellent example of how English can be used. From the build-up to the sweet release on the bird less beach, with the ‘…slow slush of waves calmly recoiling…’ I’m in that story and can smell the salty air; this is the perfect coming-of-age tale.”
Moody-Corbett’s work has appeared in The Fiddlehead, Riddle Fence, and on the Paris Review Daily. He has also been shortlisted for a CBC Canada Writes Short Story Prize, and writes regularly for Canadian Notes and Queries.
This year’s award winners were announced at an in-person gala in Edmonton on June 11th. The celebration marked the 40th anniversary of the Alberta Literary Awards and brought together writers from across Alberta.The Alberta Literary Awards were created by the Writers’ Guild of Alberta in 1982 to recognize excellence in writing by Alberta authors.
The Writers’ Guild of Alberta is the largest provincial writers’ organization in Canada and was formed in 1980 to provide a meeting ground and collective voice for the writers of the province. “Our mission is to inspire, connect, support, encourage and promote writers and writing, to safeguard the freedom to write and read, and to advocate for the well-being of writers,” the news release said.
Malady Head can be read on the Soft Punk Magazine website and a full list of winners can be found on the Writer’s Guild’s website.