MFA in Writing Alumna dee Hobsbawn-Smith Wins Prairie Fire Writing Contest

MFA in Writing alumna dee Hobsbawn-Smith,has won Prairie Fire magazine's 2018 Creative Nonfiction Writing Contest with her essay "Wiebo's Way."

The essay is part of dee's recently-completed essay collection, Bread & Water, which won 2nd place in the 2014 John V Hicks Long Manuscript contest. "Wiebo's Way" will appear in the Summer 2019 issue of Prairie Fire.

dee wrote "Wiebo's Way" in response to a feature story she'd written 11 years ago for Western living magazine. The original magazine story was about the sustainable lifestyle and self-reliant stance of convicted saboteur Wiebo Ludwig and his family, who live on a compound in the Peace Country of Alberta.

In "Wiebo's Way", dee delves into her personal life through the lens of her role as a parent and daughter in response to the challenges posed by Wiebo Ludwig. Intercut with scenes that show the accomplishment and weaknesses of Trickle Creek's inhabitants, dee investigates new ways of thinking about drug addiction, along with societal attitudes toward aging women and disciplinary methods available to parents Ultimately, dee learns about forgiveness.

Bio:

A retired chef and ex-restaurateur, dee lives on family land west of Saskatoon with her partner, the writer Dave Margoshes. Her poetry, essays, short fiction, and journalism has appeared in Canadian, American and Scottish anthologies, literary journals, websites, newspapers, and magazines. She earned her MFA in Writing at the University of Saskatchewan.

Recent work has appeared in Creative Nonfiction, Canadian Literature, Queen's Quarterly, The Antigonish Review, and The New Quarterly.

She's published seven books: her debut poetry collection, Wildness Rushing In, was a finalist for Book of the Year and Best Poetry Collection at the SK Book Awards; Foodshed: An Edible Albert Alphabet, won three international awards. 

She recently sent Abundance, her second poetry collection, into the world to find a home, and her long poem, "Jeanne Dark comes of age on the prairie"

will be published as a chapbook by Espresso Chapbooks in 2019. She recently completed her debut essay collection, Bread & Water, which earned 2nd prize in the John V. Hicks Manuscript Award.

At present, she is working on a novel, is Poetry Editor of Grain magazine, and writes a food column for Grainews. She's served as Writer in Residence at the Saskatoon Public Library, taught creative writing at St. Peter's College in Humboldt, SK, has been a Fiction Mentor for the Saskatchewan Writers Guild, and led Saskatoon's Sage Hill Teen Writing Camp for three years. In her spare time, she cooks, quilts, and runs half marathons in preference to learning to play her guitar.