2019-2020 Meg Sircom Scholarship Winner at Vanier College

Montreal, August 27, 2020. Vanier College is pleased to announce the winner of the 2019-2020 Meg Sircom Memorial Scholarship for creative writing.

In 2019-2020, the selection committee received a record number of portfolios (26), so competition was fierce! The committee is delighted to present the scholarship to Building Systems Engineering Technology student Mahfuzara Parvin, and honourable mentions to Aashiha Babu and Silka Adelle Tandoc.

??oeOn reading Mahfuzara's poems, we were struck by her evocation of the power of the sea - to awe, to lull, to empower, to call to action, and to tie us to eternity. Her first poem takes us on a journey, with the sea as a portal leading us to ??oefall / into the unknown.” By the final poem, her speaker has the power to "bend the water of the sea,” says Marianne Lynch on behalf of the selection committee.

The Covid-19 pandemic made it impossible to hold an awards ceremony this year. Instead, the selection committee created a celebratory document, which gives a taste of the engaging, inspired and impressive work of these student writers. Read it here: https://www.vaniercollege.qc.ca/english/scholarships/

Meg Sircom, who was a Vanier English teacher from 2001-2011, was a fiction writer and valued both academic and creative writing. After her death from breast cancer in 2011, the Vanier English Department set up a scholarship in her honour and the scholarship has been awarded every year since, in January.

Open to all students, the Meg Sircom Memorial Scholarship is a $500 scholarship for achievement in English and Creative Writing. The recipient must have earned grades of 80%+ in two English courses, and must have produced a portfolio of creative writing judged to be outstanding by an adjudicating committee of English teachers.

Past recipients of the scholarship have indicated that winning the award helped them realize for the first time they had an unusual talent for writing. Others, like singer-songwriter Sarah Rossy felt encouraged to continue writing and performing their own works.

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For information please contact:
Marguerite Corriveau, Vanier Communications 514-744-7500 ext. 7596
marguerite.corriveau@vaniercollege.qc.ca