The Word Guild is a community of Canadian Christian writers, editors, speakers, and more who celebrate the written word. 

According to their website, "The Word Awards was established to encourage the pursuit of excellence in the art, craft, practice and ministry of writing and help to raise the profile of Canadian writers who are Christian."

The awards for this year were just announced, and four Manitobans were among the winners.

 

Steve Bell

Category: Poetry

Poem: Freedom Road

Bell wrote this poem while working together with churches, activists, and the communities affected during the Freedom Road struggle in Manitoba.

"I'm a little embarrassed about it in the sense that I'm not a poet, but it's nice... I wrote a sonnet during the Freedom Road struggle and it ended up being used in Intotemak Magazine, and that's what got me the award... It means that the people that do this thought you've done something reasonable. In the art world there's always a core insecurity for everyone for everything you've put out and the thing about awards is that basically it's your peers saying 'we've recognized that you'd done something reasonably well' so its just very affirming."

 

Terrie Todd

Category: Novel - Historical

Novel: The Silver Suitcase

This is a Christian Fiction that tells a story of a young woman in the midst of turmoil in her life discovering her Grandmother's diary from the WWII era that helps her move forward.

"I'm excited of course... Until I saw the official news release it didn't seem real... Ever since I started this journey, my deal with God was that my job would be to keep writing and keep learning how to write and keep putting my stuff out there as best as I could and the rest was up to Him because it's totally out of my hands really, you know, whose hands the book ends up in and who gets to read it and who publishes it and all that."

 

Dustin Schellenberg

Category: Blog

Blog: Team Cap - Stand Firm

This blog compares Captain America to the struggle of standing up for what you believe in as a Christian. He talks about the struggle of often pushing against societal norms and wanting to defend truth while also speaking and acting in love.

"It was really great because it's not a traditional blog... it's pretty geeky and it's really cool to see that getting recognition. And even the idea of being thoughtful in our faith and questioning our faith, it's nice to see that as a Church we're moving that way. As the Greater Church we're willing to accept some less usual ways to present truth."

 

Allison Barron

Category: Short Feature

Short Feature: Trinity Western University’s Battle for Religious Freedom Heats Up

This article was featured in Faith Today and discusses a part of the struggle Trinity Western was going through with the government in relation to some of their policies and views that were causing controversy. 

"For my category, I actually got an email saying there WAS no shortlist of nominees because only one entry stood out to the judges. So I had no idea until I saw my name on the list of winners. I was blown away. It's an honour to have something I worked on tagged as remarkable. Part of the reason I write is to impact other people and encourage them to think deeper. Whether it inspires hope or incites a comment on why all my opinions or sources are wrong—I've done my job if a reader leaves an article asking questions about themselves or the world they live in. At least these particular judges must think I'm doing something right!"