Renato Gandia

A couple of months ago, I was making plans for a week of working remotely in Vancouver with my husband. We were scrolling through accommodations, comparing prices, half-distracted in that way you are at the end of a workday, when my phone rang.

It was around 5 p.m.

An unknown number.

Normally, I wouldn’t answer. I’ve learned not to. It’s almost always a spam call, a robocall, something that takes more than it gives.

But I answered.

The name didn’t register right away. There was a slight delay, a moment where I was still halfway inside the search results, the listings, the small logistics of a life being planned.

Then she said it: the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.

My heart dropped.

I don’t remember everything she said after that. I know I was listening—I was trying to—but something in me had already given way.

I started crying.

Not quietly, not in a way I could hide. It came in waves, the kind that interrupt speech, that make you aware of your own voice as something fragile and breaking.

In between sobs, I asked her, Can you please spell your name for me?

I didn’t want to forget it.

I didn’t want to forget her.

I told her, You have no idea what this means to me. And then I kept crying.

Somewhere beside me, my husband had pulled out his phone and started filming.

When I ended the call, he was staring at me, confused. I don’t think he had ever seen me cry like that—sudden, uncontrollable.

He said, “Do tell.”

Still crying I told him. I was still somewhere inside the call, inside the voice that had just told me my writing life, in some small but undeniable way, had changed.

And then it clicked for him.

“Fabulous,” he said.

Then I had to keep it to myself.

Not completely—there were allowances. I could tell family, close friends. But the world, the wider world I had been trying to write my way into for years, would have to wait for the official announcement.

So I chose my people.

I made phone calls.

Not many. Just the ones who knew. The ones who had seen the drafts, the doubt, the long stretches of silence. The ones who understood what it meant to keep writing without knowing if anyone was reading, or would ever read.

I told them one by one.

Boyd filmed some of those too — me on screen, still crying, still unable to hold it together.

Each one a quiet confirmation.

For a few days, the news lived only in those conversations.

Held there.

Protected, almost.

In the days that followed the announcement, the messages came—quietly, steadily, from family and friends, near and far.

Now, I’ll get to spend time with the other finalists in Toronto.

I know I may not win.

The call came. The voice said my name in the same breath as the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.

And that, for now, is enough.