A graduate of the Creative Writing Program at the University of British Columbia has won this year's $10,000 Governor General's Literary Award in English for poetry.
Stephanie Bolster (BFA, Creative Writing '91; MFA, Creative Writing '94) won for White Stone: The Alice Poems published by Signal Editions/Vehicule Press. White Stone: The Alice Poems was selected from 90 titles submitted for the award.
"The Alice poems benefit from Stephanie's West Coastness, the ability to shift identity and merge with the surrounding greenery and scenery," says Creative Writing Prof. George McWhirter.
"She brings the glitz of sequins and Lycra in the present together with life and imagination's unpredictable turns through the lacework of the past."
Bolster completed her thesis work with poet and UBC Killam Teaching Prize winner McWhirter in 1994.
White Stone: The Alice Poems, is Bolster's first published collection. It explores the disturbing yet fascinating relationship between Charles Dodgson, also known as Lewis Carroll, and Alice Liddell, who was the inspiration for Carroll's Alice books.
Bolster's next book, Two Bowls of Milk, will be published by McClelland & Stewart in spring 1999.
Bolster has previously won the Bronwen Wallace Award, the Malahat Long Poem Competition, the Mother Tongue Press Chapbook Competition and the Norma Epstein Award.