Gwen Benaway (born Giles Benaway) is Canadian poet and activist. As of October 2019, she was a PhD candidate in the Women & Gender Studies Institute at the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Toronto.[1] Benaway has also written non-fiction for The Globe and Mail and Maclean's.[2]
Benaway, who claims Anishinaabe and Métis descent,[3] is an advocate for the rights of transgender Indigenous people.[4] However, her claims to Indigenous identity have been called into question.[5]
She has spoken publicly about the healthcare system and transphobia.[6] Benaway has said, ″I guess I can't tell the difference between living and writing, the social and the political, the body and the voice, the binary and the limitlessness of my heart. I'm trans, and by that I mean I'm beyond what the world can contain."[7]
Benaway was one of the most prominent activists against the Toronto Public Library's decision to allow the feminist writer Meghan Murphy and the Radical Feminists Unite group to hold a speaking event at the library in 2019.[8] She protested against the event to express her objection to comments Murphy had made about transgender people and Murphy's opposition to the establishment of transgender rights legislation.[9] In an interview, Benaway said she had been "kettled in the library" by the Toronto police during the protest.[clarification needed][10]
Benaway's poetry reflects her experience as a trans woman, and often speaks about the ongoing realities of colonial violence.[11] Scholar of LGBT and Two-Spirit Indigenous literatures Lisa Tatonetti described Benaway's work as "aesthetically beautiful" and wrote of Benaway's Passage that "while an incredibly personal book from a self-described feminist confessional poet, Passage, in its lyric beauty, its bravery, and its testament to survival and rebirth, is a gift to readers as well."[12] The peer assessment committee for the Governor General's Literary Awards described Holy Wild as "lyrical rhythmic and fierce. It was an extraordinary experience reading this burning, honest manifesto."[13]
Benaway has published three poetry collections to date, with one further announced:
Benaway curated the following collection of short fiction:
Benaway's writing has been featured in the following collections:
In 2015, Benaway was the inaugural winner of the "Legislative Assembly of Ontario Speaker's Award for Young Authors" for Ceremonies for the Dead[24][25] In 2016 she received the Honour of Distinction from the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ writers.[26]
She won Prism International's Creative Non-Fiction contest in 2017 for her piece "Between a Rock and a Hard Place".[27]
In 2019 Benaway won the Governor General's Literary Award for English poetry for Holy Wild.[28] The collection of poems look at the intersection of Indigenous and transgender identities.[1] The book was also shortlisted for the Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry at the 31st Lambda Literary Award,[29] the Trillium Book Award for Poetry, and the Publishing Triangle Award for Trans and Gender-Variant Literature.[10]
In 2019, Benaway's essay "A Body Like a Home" won a Gold medal in the 42nd National Magazine Awards in the Personal Journalism category.[30]
Lokasi Pengunjung: 18.216.26.192