Thank you to everyone who submitted to the 2022 Vallum Chapbook Award!
Each year we receive hundreds of entries and we are grateful so many poets trust us with their work. After much consideration, we are so excited to announce three finalists for this year’s Chapbook Award. Please join us in congratulating Elena Bentley, for Taliped, Scott Cecchin for House, and Karen Mandell for The Clothesline Series.
Elena Bentley (she/her) is a disabled, bi, and Métis/settler emerging poet, editor, and book reviewer from Saskatchewan. She is a Citizen of Métis Nation-Saskatchewan, and she holds an MA in English from the University of Toronto. Elena’s poetry has been published in various magazines and journals, including Arc Poetry, The Malahat Review, PRISM international, and Room, and is forthcoming in Grain.
Scott Cecchin (pronounced “ch-keen”) is a queer poet living on Traditional Michi Saagiig Nishnaabeg Territory, in Nogojiwanong/Peterborough, ON. Currently, he teaches Communications to college students. His first chapbook, Dusk at Table (2020), was published by O. Underworld! Press in Havelock, ON.
Karen Mandell has taught literature and writing at various community centers and schools in Massachusetts. She grew up near Lake Michigan in Chicago and now enjoys being not too far from the Atlantic on the East Coast.
