Wilfrid Laurier University announced the winners of the Laurier Stedman Prize creative writing competition during a ceremony at One Market on Wednesday, May 27, 2026.
The biennial competition, which was founded in 2018, is funded through an endowment and estate gift from the late Mary Stedman, and is administered by the school’s English program.
Prior to her passing in 2014, Stedman served as managing director of Stedman’s Bookstore Ltd. for nearly 25 years and was a member of the executive of the Canadian Booksellers Association. The competition was created to honour her lifelong dedication to celebrating and promoting arts and culture.
This year, 54 students submitted original, unpublished works of fiction up to 1,500 words. The competition was open to high school students within the Grand Erie and Brant Haldimand Norfolk Catholic District school board catchment area.
Associate Professor Lisa Wood, coordinator of both the Laurier Stedman Prize and the English program at Laurier’s Brantford campus, said she was thrilled to see a record level of participation.
“We were so excited with this year’s crop of stories. We had a record-breaking number of submissions, and the creativity in what these students were coming up with and sharing with us was absolutely amazing,” she said. “This is my very favourite part of my job, I look forward to it every two years. So much recognition goes to student athletes that I think it is refreshing and inspiring for us to be able to celebrate the arts, and I think this is exactly what Mary Steadman would have wanted to see happening.”
According to a Wilfrid Laurier media release, entries were anonymously judged by five sub-juries. The top two stories from each sub-jury were then provided to a prize jury to rank the ten finalists and select the winner.
While at the event, $13,000 in cash prizes were given to the top six original short story submissions, making the competition one of Canada’s most generous creative writing contests.
Assumption College School student Seerat Virk, 17, won first place for her short story, The Same Wind, awarding the Grade 12 student with a $3,500 cash prize.
Virk, who participated in the contest in 2024 but did not place as a finalist, said she was in shock after hearing the news.
“I’m going to be honest, I really can’t believe it,” she said. “I was sitting there watching all the other finalists go up, and when they were announcing first place, I didn’t think it was going to be me. But then I heard the first two words of my story, which were really unique because I used a cultural reference, and I just couldn’t believe it.”
The student said that while coming up with and fleshing out her story was a challenging process, she was happy she took the chance.
“For me, writing a short story is really hard. It’s either poetry or, if I have an idea, then I want to flesh it out into a whole novel. There is no medium for me,” Virk said, with a laugh. “So writing a short story was hard, but I’m really glad I did it. It was a long process getting the story where it needed to be, and I was really emotionally connected to it, so it means a lot to me to get the award.”
The rest of the winners were as follows:
Second place ($2,500 each): The Price of Fame by Emerald Bertran, Holy Trinity Catholic High School, Grade 9; The Weight of the World by Julia Roberts, McKinnon Park Secondary School, Grade 12
Third place ($1,500 each): Red Willow River by Yehati Antone, W. Ross Macdonald School, Grade 10; Mouthful of Rust by Chris Hodge, Waterford District High School, Grade 11; Punchline by Talia Mago, Delhi District Secondary School, Grade 12
Runners-up (merchandise prize): The Story We Tell by Arianna Chang, Brantford Collegiate Institute, Grade 12; I Remember Grace by Leilah Janssen, North Park Collegiate and Vocational School, Grade 11; The Department of Optimism by Ashwin Kronwald, North Park Collegiate and Vocational School, Grade 10; and The House That Will Never Forget by Michael Rose, Dunnville Secondary School, Grade 11.
“Ranking the finalists is really tough because each of the stories is a work of art that grabs you with its creativity, craftsmanship and emotional punch,” said Ken Paradis, Associate Professor of English at Laurier’s Brantford campus and chair of the Laurier Stedman Prize jury. “Congratulations to all the talented young writers who participated in the contest and special thanks to the unsung heroes, their teachers, who helped cultivate and foster that talent.”
Kimberly De Jong’s reporting is funded by the Canadian government through its Local Journalism Initiative.The funding allows her to report rural and agricultural stories from Blandford-Blenheim and Brant County. Reach her at kimberly.dejong@brantbeacon.ca.
