The Southern Alberta Art Gallery Maansiksikaitsitapiitsinikssin’s annual SAAG Arts Writing Prize recognizes and supports emerging writers whose writing relates to the field of contemporary art. Art writing is essential to supporting a healthy art ecosystem, providing access points for contemporary art practice, engaging different voices in the field, and encouraging and developing discourse in the arts.
Writers can be considered for one or both of this year’s categories: 1) Arts Writing and 2) the Aruna D’Souza Award for BIPOC Writers. The requirements and prizes for each category are listed below. All entries are eligible to be published in the 2025 SAAG Arts Writing Prize Reader, made in-house at the Gallery’s Tiny Press. All applicants will be provided with a complimentary copy of the Reader.
This prize focuses on submissions of writing about contemporary art. This includes but is not limited to: exhibition reviews, critical essays, ekphrasis, etc. We will also consider experimental and innovative approaches to writing about contemporary art, including poetry, prose, creative fiction, etc.
2025 ARTS WRITING PRIZE WINNER: KAYA PANTHIER
Though her heart resides in Portsmouth, Dominica, Kaya Panthier currently lives and works in Sackville, New Brunswick.
Primarily a painter, Panthier’s work reimagines the landscape of the tropics as one which conceals, protects, and houses spirit. Through a study of incalescence, revolt, exalt, and haunting on the island of Dominica, her current practice blends a reverence for personal legend with an interest in Caribbean folktales.
Her art and writing embodies portrayals of familial relationships, explorations of intergenerational wisdom, and studies in grief. In acknowledgment of the cycles of life and death that permeate every aspect of existence, Panthier draws inspiration from the island’s volcanic origins as a powerful energetic source. These concepts are embedded within her paintings through the use of fluorescent grounds, which give the sense that both flesh and flora are energetically charged by the heat that birthed them.
2025 ARTS WRITING PRIZE RUNNER UP: FRANÇOIS BOUVIER
Originally from Gatineau, François has practiced acrobatics since the age of 5. In his most recent work, he is interested in what emerges when different elements—the acrobatic body, landscapes and digital imagery, personal and collective stories, poetry—are invited to cohabit a space. Working through improvisation, François collects encounters between these elements, weaving a network of relations and repercussions, transforming objects into images and the body into a story.
2025 ARUNA D’SOUZA AWARD FOR BIPOC WRITERS WINNER: LEANNA BARWICK
Leanna Barwick (she/her) is an interdisciplinary artist, emerging writer, and facilitator based in Toronto/Tkaronto. Her work moves between systems and stories—shifting through institutional critique, speculative design, and poetic refusal. She traces the architectures of power that erase, contain, and commodify. Leanna holds a Bachelor of Design in Digital Futures from Ontario College of Art and Design University, where her research focused on critical play, game design, and co-design methodologies. As a creative leadership facilitator and Professional Certified Coach (PCC), she builds spaces for relational accountability and collective unlearning. Her practice is rooted in care, disruption, and collaboration—and holds space for what refuses resolution.
2025 ARUNA D’SOUZA AWARD FOR BIPOC WRITERS RUNNER UP: SARAH ROWE
Sarah Rowe is a writer, storyteller, and communications professional with an artist’s eye for detail and a deep reverence for the power of storytelling.
Born in Kitakyushu, Japan, to a Kenyan father and a Canadian mother, Sarah embodies a life shaped by multiple worlds. A mixed-race Black woman, she moves through spaces where cultures intertwine, where art is not separate from life but an extension of it. Now based in Newfoundland she writes to capture the quiet magic of everyday moments in Canada—the way light moves through color, the way stories imprint themselves on memory, the way art invites us to step inside and belong.
As a woman of the world and a single Black mother, Sarah gravitates toward narratives that reflect diverse experiences, knowing how vital it is for children to see themselves in the worlds they imagine. She aspires to create work that invites young readers to find themselves in its pages, celebrating identity, wonder, and the transformative power of art.
