Joelle Barron and Dominique Bernier-Cormier are among those longlisted in the 2019 League of Canadian Poets Book Awards on April 1, 2019.

The shortlists will be announced Tuesday, April 23. The winners will be announced in June and receive a prize of $2,000.

The League of Canadian Poets was founded in 1966 for advancement of poetry in Canada and the promotion of the interests of poets. Over 700 members are professional poets in various stages of their career who actively contribute to poetry in Canada.

Let’s talk about The Forbidden Purple City. Author Philip Huynh was the 2016 co-winner of the Emerging Writers Award and has been widely published in literary journals and the Journey Prize Anthology. This collection of stories took Huynh over 10 years to write.

“The stories are disparate in theme and voice, and I wanted an arrangement that would showcase their stylistic diversity to the greatest effect,” says Huynh, who launches The Forbidden Purple City tonight in Vancouver.

Marlene Creates and Stephen Andrews have won the 2019 Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts.

The awards celebration will take place March 28th at Rideau Hall, where the winners will receive a $25,000 prize and a special-edition bronze medallion representing the Canada Council for the Arts. Following the celebration, there will be an exclusive exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada showcasing the work of the award winners.

In 1927 five women brought a case to the Supreme Court of Canada to establish the right of women to be appointed to the Senate. These women were Emily Murphy, Henrietta Muir Edwards, Nellie McClung, Louise Crummy McKinney, and Irene Parlby. At the time women were not legally recognized as “persons” and could be denied rights based on narrow interpretations of the law. In fact, while some women in Canada gained the right to vote in 1916, many women — particularly women of colour — did not. By 1960, all women in Canada won the right to vote.

In recognition of the “Famous Five” bringing this case to the SCC, we have chosen five of our women authors to spotlight for Women’s History Month. These authors produce award-winning writing we love to read, and we’ve included some of their reviews and interviews as well.