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York University's Department of English presents its annual English Awards, which recognize outstanding essays written by students in undergraduate courses across all levels.
Each year the department offers several prizes and scholarships for students in English and creative writing, many honouring former faculty members. Several of the prizes are supported by generous donations from former faculty, alumni and affiliated community members.
As is often the case, several winners produced work that reflected students’, and the University’s, ongoing efforts to pursue progressive new ways of thinking about culture and the world.
For example, student Chance Garratt-Dahan won the Best 1000-level Essay Prize for her essay titled “Story-Telling and the Preservation of Law & Justice." The Avie Bennet Prize in Canadian Literature went to Rosina Nicolazzo for "Julius Caesar and The Death of a Chief: The Deconstruction of Colonial Knowledge and Reclamation of Indigeneity Through Theatre."
Other students recognized for their work were:
Best 2000-Level Essay Prize 2022-23
Winner: Charlie Lee for “The Construct of Freedom: Comparing Baldwin and Jacobs.”
Honourable Mention: Sydney Nattoo for “The Tendrils and The Spaces Between: Metafiction in Cat’s Cradle.”
Best 3000-Level Essay Prize 2022-23
Winner: Emily Schuster-Woldan for “Reading a Film: Character Interiority in Amy Tan’s The Joy Luck Club (1989) and its Film Adaptation (1993).”
Best 4000-level Essay Prize 2022-23
Winner: Trevor Froates for “The Swan’s Nest: Shakespeare and the birds of Cymbeline.”
Honourable Mention: Lubna Salama for “On Culinary Poisoning as One of the Fine Arts: Female Poisoners Edition.”
Brian Hepworth Memorial Scholarship 2022-23
Winner: Amor Lomibao for “Racialized Liminality as Suffering in William Blake’s ‘The Little Black Boy’ and Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone.”
Honourable Mention: Joseph Sereney for “Tyranny and the Power of the Female Voice in Pericles, The Two Noble Kinsmen, and The Winter’s Tale.”
Department of English Retirees’ Scholarship 2022-23
Co-winners: Suzanne Gregory and Javeria Rana.
Elizabeth Sabiston Prize 2022-23
Co-winner: Katura Gibb for “A Becoming Silence” and Robert MacIsaac for “Burning the Rule Book: Portrayals of Love in The Lais of Marie de France.”
H.K. Girling Literature Prize 2022-23
Winner: Cody Poisson for “A Great Deal Too Light.”
June McMaster-Harrison Memorial Scholarship 2022-23
Winner: Emma Verrilli for “Authenticity as Personal Legacy: Explorating my Family’s Italian-Canadian Immigrant Experience through Community Cookbook Writing.”
Honourable Mention: Lubna Salama for “On Culinary Poisoning as One of the Fine Arts: Female Poisoners Edition.”
Lucille Herbert Memorial Scholarship 2022-23
Winner: Cody Poisson.
Matthew Ahern Memorial Prize 2022-23
Winner: Jean-Louis Voyer.
Stephanie Stavro Scholarship in English 2022-23
Winner: John Batista.
Teaching Assistants’ Award for Excellence 2022-23
Winner: Madelaine McLaughlin.
Winning essays are preserved in the University’s open-access repository, YorkSpace. They can be found in the English Undergraduate Essay Prizes Collection.