Richard Carver Award – for Emerging Writers

Richard Carver (a former president of NDAC) moved to Nelson from Ottawa where he had worked for The Ottawa Citizen and after that had a distinguished career with the National Library for twenty years. After moving to Nelson in 2001, he found a community where he could explore his own passions of writing and painting while serving as a cultural volunteer and support of many young artists in the community. Carver passed away suddenly in 2009.

The Nelson District Arts Council is proud to honour Carver’s contributions to the Kootenay arts scene, with the support of the Carver Family. The Carver Award  recognizes an emerging writer–one who has self-published one to two books (or through a small publisher). The recipient must be a West Kootenay resident and the published work can be of any genre.

Nominations must include name and contact information for both the nominator and the nominee, writing discipline (fiction, creative nonfiction, poetry, teen, children’s, etc), titles of published works and their publishers, and a paragraph outlining the reason for the nomination. Nominees are judged using three criteria: quality of work, the strength of nomination, and community engagement.

Nomination forms for 2023 are now available here!