The Fiddlehead contest issue – no. 251 – is out!

Rejoice! Spring has arrived and so have the winning stories and poems from The Fiddlehead’s 21st annual contest! Celebrate with all the contest winners and other authors by picking up and reading this fresh and lively issue.

In addition to wonderful poems and stories from the contest, you will also find stories from Yasuko Thanh and Grant Buday and poems from John Wall Barger, Karen Enns, Zachariah Wells, Heather Cadsby, Yvonne Blomer, and John Donlan among others. There are also reviews of books authored by M. Travis Lane, Madeline Bassnett, Sheila McClarty, Priscilla Uppal, Sue Goyette, Edward Riche, Steve Noyes, and Heather Jessup. The cover artwork is from David McKay’s "Fiddlehead Season," a beautiful watercolour painting.

New Brunswick Arts Board Videos

Over the next few months New Brunswick Arts Board (artsnb) is producing a series of short videos profiling New Brunswick artists across a wide variety of artistic disciplines. Below is the video celebrating New Brunswick writers:

To see other videos in this series, check out artnb's YouTube channel.

Nominations Congratulations!

Congratulations to Shane Neilson, who has been nominated for the 35th annual National Magazine Award in poetry for his poems, "St. Anthony's Fire" and "The Perfect Fatherhood." Both poems were published in The Fiddlehead 249 (Autumn 2011). The 2012 National Magazine Awards will be presented on June 7th in Toronto.

Also congratulations to Ken Babstock, Phil Hall, and Jan Zwicky, who are the three Canadian finalists for the 2012 Griffin Poetry Prize. All three have published poems in past issues of The Fiddlehead and Zwicky is a past Fiddlehead poetry editor (and current associate editor). Babstock's most recent Fiddlehead publication in no. 244 (Summer 2010) included the title poem from his Griffin-nominated book, Methodist Hatchet.