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    Dawn Macdonald’s Northerny has won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize.

    Literary Hub
    By 
    May 21, 2025, 10:15am

    Today, the Griffin Poetry Prize announced that Dawn Macdonald has won the 2025 Canadian First Book Prize for Northerny (University of Alberta Press). The prize judges called the book “a blast of crisp Yukon air. Funny and fresh, unexpected and daring, it understands ‘the personal is heretical,’ and glories in that fact. It’s a rush, a relief, and remakes with impishness the notion of what a poem can be.”

    Macdonald will be awarded C$10,000 as well as a six-week residency in Italy, offered in partnership with the Civitella Ranieri Foundation, and will be invited to present at the 2025 Griffin Poetry Prize Readings, along with the Griffin Poetry Prize finalists, on June 4.

    Canadian First Book Prize Dawn Macdonald Griffin Poetry Prize literary prizes Northerny poetry

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