Meet the Finalists for the Inaugural Catherine B. Fogarty Creative Non-Fiction Award

Andrew W. Boyd is a graduate of Trinity College at the University of Toronto and UofT’s School of Continuing Studies Creative Writing Program. Andrew holds a master’s in Canadian social history from UofT and a doctorate in Computing from Pace University in New York. Winner of Briarpatch’s 2021 Writing in the Margins contest, he works for a global cloud services provider. Andrew resides in Western New York, in a ruinous century home with his demented rescue cat Lynx.

The Kingdom of the Dead: A senior executive tumbles into addiction and homelessness, losing his family and friends, and winding up on the streets of Toronto. Bouncing between homeless shelters, alleyways and psychiatric wards, he spends two winters on the streets fighting mid-level predators and his own mind.  
 

Elected in 2009 as the first woman and youngest person to represent her provincial rural riding, Michelle Mungall then stepped into BC’s Cabinet in 2017 as the second woman in British Columbia's history to be minister for energy and mining. Known as a go-getter, Michelle led critical files that increased energy production, enabled climate action and supported reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. She did all of this while becoming a new mom and blazing trails for a more family friendly Parliamentary system. Since leaving public office in 2020, Michelle has completed her Creative Writing Certificate from the University of Toronto, wrote her memoir Minister Mom, and started a monthly column in The Vancouver Sun. Michelle works as a Senior Advisor for both the energy storage industry and major projects’ gender safety programs. She and her family enjoy life in Nelson, BC and all that the mountains have to offer.

“Life as a new Cabinet minister and a new mom was a never-ending quadruple loop rollercoaster. I was a pioneer – 11th of only 14 in Canadian history to give birth while a government minister, and the second woman to be a British Columbia minister of energy and mines. I wasn’t just making big decisions. I was blazing trails just by showing up.” Bringing readers behind the cameras and into the lives of the people on their election ballots, this memoir not only tells the story of B.C.’s historic minority government under John Horgan, but dives into the gendered workplace politics where the workplace is politics. Double-standards, glass ceilings, the proverbial hurdles and the old boys’ club are as real as the marble urinals found in the women’s washroom of the BC Legislature – and they only got more challenging once a baby arrived on the scene. This is undoubtedly a unique perspective on politics by someone in the middle of it all and doing things differently. 
 

Based in Tiohtià:ke/Montréal, Nancy O’Rourke is a writer of essays and memoirs. With a PhD in sociology, specializing in human rights and social justice, she has written widely on issues affecting the rights of women and children. An emerging creative writer, she has won several awards for her essays, and is published in carte blanche, Prairie Fire and Dreamers Creative Writing, among others. In her spare time Nancy paints—abstracts and portraits—sometimes of the characters she writes about.

What the Heart Remembers When the Brain Forgets is a memoir concerning the multifaceted relationship between Nancy and her mother, Barb; one that focuses on identity and the intersection of self. In her later years, afflicted by Alzheimer’s, Barb began speaking of Nancy’s past—Nancy’s career and travels—as those of her own. This confusion was not just a quirk of her illness, but a reflection of the enmeshment that defined their connection as a whole. This memoir examines the complexities of a mother-daughter relationship, and how Nancy came to better understand her mother at a point in her life when she was seemingly no longer understandable.