SAAG Arts Writing Prize 2022 Call for Submissions

The Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin is a leading contemporary public art gallery in Lethbridge, AB. Over the course of forty years, the Gallery has evolved from a grassroots initiative to become a significant participant in the national dialogue on contemporary art.
The Gallery is located on traditional territories of the Siksikaitsitapii, or Blackfoot Confederacy. We honour and acknowledge the Siksikaitsitapii, who have cared for these lands since time immemorial. We recognize that Treaty 7 territory is also home to the Métis Nation of Alberta, Region III, and many other Indigenous peoples.
The Gallery is excited to announce the 11th annual SAAG Arts Writing Prize. This competition aims to recognize emerging arts writers, critics, poets, creatives and students, providing them the opportunity to expand their practice. For the purposes of the award, an emerging writer is defined as anyone who has not published more than one piece of writing in a recognized print or online publication, exclusive of student-run journals and magazines, as well as self-published works.

Writers can submit to one or both of this year’s categories: Arts Writing and the Aruna D’Souza Award for BIPOC writers. The deadline for submissions has been extended to June 10, 2022 at midnight. The requirements and prizes for each category are listed below. Winners will be recognized at a reception at the Gallery on August 18. All entries are eligible to be published in the SAAG Arts Writing Prize Reader 2022, made in-house at the Gallery’s Tiny Press bookbinding studio. Participants will receive a copy of the publication. This prize is offered in partnership with Galleries West Magazine.
ELIGIBILITY
 
Writers must be at least 18 years of age at the time of entry. The competition is open to anyone residing in Canada, regardless of citizenship status, and to Canadians living abroad. All submissions must be original and previously unpublished, inclusive of online publications. Images are welcomed to be included as part of the texts.
Writers retain all copyrights to their submitted work. Selected winners consent to the inclusion of their work in the SAAG Arts Writing Prize Reader 2022. All submissions are eligible to be included in this publication, however writers who have not been selected for an award may choose to opt out.
Participants may submit to multiple categories, but can only submit one work per category and will only be eligible to win in one category.
An electronic submission is preferred. Please email submissions, and any questions or accommodation requests to Courtney Faulkner, Public Engagement & Event Coordinator, at cfaulkner@saag.ca with the subject line, “SAAG Arts Writing Prize”. We ask that submissions include a brief biography for promotional use.
CATEGORIES & PRIZES
ARTS WRITING 

• Open format arts writing: critical essay, exhibition review, poetry, prose, experimental text, creative fiction, photo essay, etc.
• Maximum 1000 words 
• $1000 prize; Gushul Studio Writer’s Cottage residency (Blairmore, Alberta) for 2 weeks in August, 2022; editorial mentorship opportunity to write and publish a current exhibition review for Galleries West

ARUNA D’SOUZA (BIPOC)

• Open format arts writing: critical essay, exhibition review, poetry, prose, experimental text, creative fiction, photo essay, etc.
• Maximum 1000 words
• Author self-identifies as Indigenous, Black, and/or racialized
• $1000 prize; Gushul Studio Writer’s Cottage residency (Blairmore, Alberta) for 2 weeks in August, 2022; editorial mentorship opportunity to write and publish a current exhibition review for Galleries West

 
The Gallery is committed to continually working towards more equitable systems and practices. We welcome applications from candidates who identify as Indigenous, Black, racialized, LGBTQ2S+, d/Deaf and disabled, and from poor and working-class backgrounds. If you have any questions, feedback, or require support or accommodations to access this application process, please contact Courtney Faulkner, Public Engagement & Event Coordinator, at 403.327.8770 x 22 or cfaulkner@saag.ca
 
JURY
Our jury will include editor, writer, and curator Aruna D’Souza, 2021 Aruna D’Souza Award winner Moni Brar, Editor of Galleries West Magazine Portia Priegert, and Interim Curator for the Southern Alberta Art Gallery Adam Whitford.
Aruna D'Souza writes about modern and contemporary art; intersectional feminisms and other forms of politics; and how museums shape our views of each other and the world.  Her work appears regularly in 4Columns.org, where she is a member of the editorial advisory board, and she is a contributor to The New York Times. Her writing has also appeared in The Wall Street Journal, CNN.com, Art News, Garage, Bookforum, Frieze, Momus, Art in America, and Art Practical, among other places. Her book, Whitewalling: Art, Race, and Protest in 3 Acts (Badlands Unlimited), was named one of the best art books of 2018 by the New York Times. Her most recent editorial project is Linda Nochlin’s Making It Modern: Essays on the Art of the Now, published by Thames & Hudson in 2022. She is editor of Lorraine O’Grady’s Writing in Space 1973-2018 (Duke University Press, 2020), and is co-curator of the retrospective of O’Grady’s work, Both/And, which opened in March 2021 at the Brooklyn Museum and is traveling across the US. She is the recipient of the 2021 Rabkin Prize for art journalism and a 2019 Andy Warhol Foundation Art Writers Grant.
Moni Brar, born in rural India, is a Punjabi-Canadian writer, educator, and farmer who gratefully divides her time between the unsurrendered territories of the Treaty 7 Region and the Syilx Okanagan Nation. Her writing explores the interrelation of time, place and identity, the friction of living in the in-betweenness of two cultures, diasporan guilt, religious violence, and the legacy of transgenerational trauma resulting from colonization. She believes in the possibility of healing through art and is inspired by writers who take an oppositional stance and work towards decolonizing western frameworks of culture, gender, and identity.
Portia Priegert, Editor of Galleries West, is based in Victoria on the traditional territory of the Lekwungen-speaking peoples. A former national news reporter with the Canadian Press, she holds an MFA from UBC Okanagan. She has taught arts writing at the University of Victoria and worked as director of the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, B.C.
Adam Whitford holds an MA in the History of Art, Design and Visual Culture from the University of Alberta. He works as the Interim Curator for the Southern Alberta Art Gallery in Lethbridge.