Two students in the School of Fine Art and Music have been chosen as 2021 recipients of major awards. Emmanuel Osahor has won the $30,000 Joseph Plaskett Postgraduate Award in Painting and Ella Gonzales received the $10,000 second-prize Nancy Petry Award. Both were enrolled in U of G’s master of fine art in studio art program.
DANIEL STOLFI
The Comedian vs Cancer
Daniel Stolfi, BA ’05, details his cancer treatment in this moving and comedic memoir. Diagnosed at age 25, he created an award-winning, one-person stage play called Cancer Can’t Dance Like This. He performed the play for 10 years across North America, raising more than $100,000 for charities. A portion of proceeds from his book sales will benefit Young Adult Cancer Canada.
HEJSA CHRISTENSEN
Stealing John Hancock
Hejsa Christensen, BA ’98, will release this debut thriller later in 2022. She writes in partnership with her mother, Alie Christensen, as H&A Christensen. Based in Ontario, the mother-daughter duo are staff writers for several film production companies.
DAVID GIULIANO
The Undertaking of Billy Buffone
An award-winning memoirist and writer of non-fiction, David Giuliano, BA ’82, M.Sc. ’93, has published his first novel, The Undertaking of Billy Buffone. Set in an isolated community in northern Ontario, the novel examines lives intertwined in the search for redemption amid the uncovering of longburied truths.
MICHAEL BARCLAY
Hearts on Fire: Six Years That Changed Canadian Music 2000-2005
Michael Barclay, BA ’93, explores a seminal period in Canadian music with stories of more than 40 diverse artists as a follow-up to his earlier volume, Have Not Been the Same: The CanRock Renaissance, 1985-1995.
JUDITH NASBY
The Making of a Museum
This volume published in 2021 by Judith Nasby, the founding director and curator of the Macdonald Stewart Art Centre, relates the story of the gallery from its beginnings in U of G hallways to its current status as the Art Gallery of Guelph. Nasby discusses the development of the museum’s collection, including Inuit drawings, Indigenous beadwork, historical European etchings and works by Canadian silversmiths.
JERRY BOUMA
The Villanova Track Story: Touching Greatness, Together Forever
How a small private university in the eastern United States became a world middledistance track and field power is related in this book by Jerry Bouma, M.Sc. (Agr.) ’77. A former Canadian junior champion, in 1970 he became the first Canadian to secure an athletics scholarship to Villanova University in Pennsylvania. Later at U of G, he was ranked No. 1 in Canada for the 1,000 metres.
DR. ALISON SEELY
The Hex Chromosome
Dr. Alison Seely, M.Sc. ’91, DVM ’95, published her second novel, The Hex Chromosome, in 2021. Her first novel, One Bone at a Time: Tales of an Adventurous Animal Chiropractor, was published in 2019.
DEEPA RAJAGOPALAN, an MFA candidate in creative writing, has won the 2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award for her short story Peacocks of Instagram. Her submission was selected from more than 130 entries by a jury of PEN Canada members. The New Voices award supports new Canadian writers of short stories, creative non-fiction, journalism and poetry, and provides $3,000 and mentorship from a Canadian author.
KAREN CARUANA (née Steinbeck), BA ’89, is a translator working from French and German into English. She is currently translating Wounded Land: Cree and Ojibwe Talk About Their Land, a history of Indigenous people in northern Ontario.