Read at the Fringe Literary Contest
The Eden Mills Writers’ Festival is committed to providing a venue for unpublished or modestly published writers to showcase their work. The Read at the Fringe Literary Contest is a special opportunity for aspiring writers to share their work with our audience in Eden Mills. Throughout the history of The Fringe, several contest winners have returned to the EMWF as published authors.
Sign up for our newsletter and be the first to know when the 2027 contest opens!
Congratulations to our 2026 Winners!
Congratulations to Sadie Simon, “Paradise” (Poetry), Catherine Lee, “Dictionary of Lost Pebbles” (Non-Fiction) and David Jensen, “Up on a Limestone Ledge” (fiction), the winners of our 2026 Read at the Fringe Literary Contest.
Sadie Simon, Catherine Lee and David Jensen will win their winning entries as part of “Emerge!” at the 2026 festival, taking place September 20, 2026 in Eden Mills, Ontario. The set will take place from 12:30-1:30 p.m. at “The Clearing” stage.
Thank you to our 2026 judges: Melinda Burns, Laura Cok, Candace de Taeye, Zandra Juarez, Kali Pearson, Greg Rhyno and Candace Webb.
We would like to extend a special mention to the contest runners-up.
Poetry
Renata Mares, “Womb in the Web of Life”
Marlena Edwards, “When I met God on the Dance Floor”
Alex Hamilton-Brown, “As We Were”
Non-fiction
Stephanie Grella, “Matriarch”
Laura Wang Arseneau, “Stigmata”
Karen Moore, “When My World Tilts”
Fiction
Jean-Pierre Forget, “Visitation”
Sarah Tsarfati, “Refraction”
Karen Strong, “The Tinder Date”