Mark Bourrie Names Simone Dalton to the 2020 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award

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he Charles Taylor Foundation and RBC Wealth Management are pleased to announce that Simone Dalton is the recipient of the 2020 RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award.

Mark Bourrie, winner of the 2020 RBC Taylor Prize for his book Bush Runner The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson named Dalton as the recipient for this year's Emerging Writer Award. Dalton had been a participant in the 2020 RBC Taylor Prize Mentorship Program, with Mr. Bourrie as her mentor. The Prize consists of a $10,000 cash prize and mentorship by Bourrie.

RBC Taylor Prize Founder Noreen Taylor commented How wonderful! We couldn't be more delighted that Mark Bourrie has named the writer he mentored as a finalist for the Prize, as the Emerging Writer. Simone Dalton is a rising star, and all of us are looking forward to discovering the next steps in what is bound to be a most promising career!

Vijay Parmar, President of RBC PH&N Investment Counsel added, RBC Wealth Management would like to congratulate Simone Dalton on being named this year's RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award recipient and is excited to watch your literary career unfold. We recognize the importance of telling our country's stories and are proud to support this Award which helps debut new Canadian writers to the rest of the world.

Mark Bourrie explained his choice Simone Dalton is a vibrant new voice who has already shown readers some of her tremendous promise. Five talented, bright, charismatic writers were introduced to RBC Taylor Prize finalists and all of them will soon become well-known to Canadian readers. Simone will now have some financing to finish a very powerful, emotional work of non-fiction. Her experiences, so varied, adventurous and intense, give her the emotional depth to be a great writer. As well, her kindness, humour, and open-mindedness will make her work so very readable.

Dalton said I am humbled by this gift in a time when equity and precariousness in the arts are top of mind. Nothing prepares you to receive this kind of generosity, nothing but the stories you have the privilege to share as a writer. Thank you, Mark Bourrie, for selecting me to receive the RBC Taylor Prize Emerging Writer Award, which will help me continue this work.

The RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award was established to provide recognition and assistance to a Canadian published author who is working on a significant writing project, preferably but not limited to the genre of literary non-fiction. Through mentorship from the current RBC Taylor Prize winner and the cash award, it is intended that the recipient will be able to progress toward the creation of a first draft.

Simone Dalton, a Trinidadian-Canadian writer currently living in Boston, earned an MFA from the University of Guelph, where she received the Constance Rooke and Board of Graduate Studies Research Scholarships. Named by Room Magazine in 2018 as one of the 20 Black Writers to Read All Year Round, her work has been published in The Unpublished City Volume I, and in the anthology, Black Writers Matter. In 2019, her inaugural short play, VOWS, debuted at Soulpepper as part of RARE Theatre's production, Welcome to My Underworld. She is now working on her first memoir.

Mark Bourrie, journalist/historian, has written numerous books including Kill the Messengers Stephen Harper's Assault on Your Right to Know, a Globe and Mail Top 100 Book of 2015. He has been a staff reporter for the Hamilton Spectator and currently teaches history at Carleton University as well as Canadian Studies at University of Ottawa.

✔️ Mark Bourrie Names Simone Dalton to the 2020 RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award

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