EVENT DETAILS
Word up!
Welcome to Markham Teen Arts Council’s WordUp! 2024 writing contest! Have a passion for writing? Do you have a story you’re itching to tell, or maybe you want to show off your writing skills and grab a reward along the way? Look no further!
Meet The Judges 2024
Charlie Petch - Poetry
Charlie Petch (they/them, he/him) is a disabled/queer/transmasculine multidisciplinary artist who resides in Tkaronto/Toronto. A poet, playwright, librettist, musician, lighting designer, and host, Petch was the 2017 Poet of Honour for the speakNORTH national festival, winner of the Sheri-D Golden Beret Award from The League of Canadian Poets (2020), and founder of Hot Damn it's a Queer Slam. Petch is a touring performer, as well as a mentor and workshop facilitator. Their debut poetry collection, Why I Was Late (Brick Books), won the 2022 ReLit Award, and was named "Best of 2021" by The Walrus. Their film with Opera QTO, Medusa's Children, premièred 2022. They have been featured on the CBC's Q, were the Writer In Residence for Berton House (2023), were long-listed for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2021. Their solo show "No one's special at the hot dog cart" debuted at Theatre Passe Muraille in 2024.
Meg Freer - Poetry
Meg Freer grew up in Montana, and now lives in Kingston, Ontario, where she is a writer, piano teacher, and editor. She holds two music degrees, and a Graduate Certificate in Creative Writing, with Distinction, from Humber School of Writers, and is a member of the Ontario Poetry Society and the League of Canadian Poets. She proofreads for Arc Poetry and is co-poetry editor for The Sunlight Press. Her publications include three poetry chapbooks, as well as award-winning prose, photos, and poems that have appeared in many literary journals in North America and abroad. She curates and co-hosts a monthly series featuring poetry performed simultaneously with live improvised music.
Missy Marston - Creative Writing
Missy Marston’s first novel, The Love Monster, was the winner of the Ottawa Book Award, a finalist for the CBC Bookie Awards and for the Scotiabank Giller Prize Readers' Choice. Her second novel, Bad Ideas, was the winner of Markham Reads and was a Together We Read Book Club pick. She lives in Ottawa.
Natalka Burian
- Creative Writing
Natalka Burian is the co-owner of Elsa, a bar in Brooklyn, as well as the co-founder of The Freya Project, a non-profit reading series that supports community-based activism and annually awards five unrestricted grants to further the work of women and non-binary writers. She received an MA from Columbia University where she studied Eastern European literature. Natalka is the author of the cocktail cookbook, A Woman’s Drink, and two novels, Daughters of the Wild and The Night Shift. Natalka, her bars and books have been featured in The New Yorker, Elle, Vogue, The New York Times, and elsewhere. She grew up on a farm, but now lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters.
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Russell Smith - Personal Essay
Russell Smith grew up in Halifax. He is a novelist, translator and cultural commentator. He is the author of nine books, eight of which are fiction. His most recent book is the story collection Confidence (Biblioasis). His novels and short stories have been nominated for a variety of awards, including the Giller Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Rogers/Writers Trust Fiction Prize, the Impac Dublin Fiction Prize, the Amazon First Novel Award, the Trillium Prize, the City of Toronto Book Prize and the Danuta Gleed Award. He has won the National Magazine Award for fiction twice. As a freelance journalist, he has written for the Globe and Mail, the New York Review of Books, Details, the Walrus, Toronto Life and many other journals. He has won the William Allen White award in the US for journalism. For twenty years he wrote a weekly column on the arts in the national Globe and Mail, and was a regular contributor, in French, to the Radio-Canada national radio show Plus On Est de Fous, Plus On Lit! He has taught creative writing at several universities, including in the University of Guelph Masters of Fine Arts program, where he taught a fiction workshop. Several of his former students have gone on to publish books. His new novel, Self-Care (Biblioasis) will be published in 2025. He lives in Toronto with his son who is in Grade 10.
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Pujita Verma - Poetry
Pujita Verma is an Indo-Canadian poet and illustrator. Her work has been featured across the TTC Network, on CBC’s The National, in Poetry Pause, FreeFall Magazine, and more. She was Mississauga’s second Youth Poet Laureate and recently won the 2024 Toronto Arts and Letters Club Foundation Poetry Award.
Krista Walsh- Personal Essay
Known for witty, vivid characters, Krista Walsh never has more fun than getting them into trouble and taking her time getting them out. When not writing, she can be found reading, gaming, or watching a film – anything to get lost in a good story. She currently lives in Ontario, Canada, with her husband, toddler, and epileptic blue heeler.
June Hur - Short Story
June Hur (허주은) is a New York Times bestselling and Edgar Award-winning author of YA Korean historicals, including The Silence of Bones, The Forest of Stolen Girls, The Red Palace, and A Crane Among Wolves. Born in South Korea, June spent her formative years in the USA, Canada, and South Korea before studying History and Literature at the University of Toronto and working at the city’s public library. Her work has been featured in Forbes, NPR, The New York Times, CBC, Vogue Korea, and KBS. She resides in Toronto with her family and can be spotted writing in coffee shops.