Welcome to the Warland Award, formerly known as the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award.
Named in honour of Canadian author Betsy Warland, this yearly award celebrates hybrid genre books published in Canada.
Founded in 2021, this prize previously known as the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award seeks to encourage readers, publishers, and reviewers to increase appreciation of work that may be considered uncategorizable, or perhaps be overlooked or misread because it is innovative in terms of form.
Creative nonfiction writer, poet, essayist, teacher, manuscript consultant, and editor Betsy Warland’s 17 books move beyond and through limitations of genre while creating, inviting, and even forcing new ways of being read. Warland’s texts have contributed greatly to Canadian literary history and continue to influence authors around the world.
The Warland Award is administered by Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors.
Please note the changes to our submission guidelines for 2025.
Meet the 2025 Judge Phanuel Antwi
Phanuel Antwi is a poet, artist, literary cultural critic, and researcher in the field of critical Black studies. He is an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. In 2022 he was named Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies. He writes, researches, and teaches in critical Black studies, settler colonial studies, Black Atlantic and disapora studies, Canadian literature and culture since 1763, critical race, gender and sexuality studies, and material culture. He has published articles in Small Axe, Interventions, and Studies in Canadian Literature, and has curated art exhibits at the Vancouver Art Gallery and at the Libby Leshgold Gallery at Emily Carr University. His book, On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace, was published in 2023 by Pluto Press, and he is completing a second book, Currencies of Blackness: Cheerfulness, Faithfulness, and Politeness in Settler Writing.