Alumni
Zoë Vega
Zoë Vega is an aspiring writer and a 2025 Dawson graduate. She is currently studying creative writing at Concordia University. She won the QWF’s “College Writers” award in November 2025.
Eden Daniel
While completing her degree in the ALC’s literature profile, Eden won the 2022 QWF College Writer’s award for a creative essay she wrote in her Literature and Creative Practices course. After completing her DEC, she went on to study English Literature at McGill University, where she is currently working on her biggest project yet, the publication of her honours undergraduate thesis on post-COVID dementia narratives and literary representations of aging bodies. Eden has also published her academic essay, “From Angel of the House to Poet of the Text: Femininity, Conjuration and Literary Legacy in Augusta Webster’s ‘Circe,'” in the esteemed intercollegiate literary journal, The Foundationalist.
Links of interest:
• Dawson interview about QWF Award
• The Foundationalist’s Instagram page
• Eden’s essay that was published in the Dawson English Journal
• Participation in 2023 Literature Profile Academic Conference
Darby Minott Bradford
Darby Minott Bradford (they/them) is a writer, editor, and translator. They hold a BA in Literature from Concordia University and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. They are the author of Dream of No One but Myself (Brick Books, 2021), which won the A.M. Klein QWF Prize for Poetry, was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, Governor General Literary Award and Gerard Lampert Memorial Award, and was longlisted for the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal. Their most recent hybrid collection, Bottom Rail on Top (Brick Books, 2023), was shortlisted for the Raymond Souster Award and the A. M. Klein, and was named a 2023 Best Canadian Poetry Book by the CBC.
Bradford’s first translation, House Within a House by Nicholas Dawson (Brick Books, 2023), received the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award and John Glassco Translation Prize, and was shortlisted for the Governor General Literary Awards for French-to-English translation. Their most recent translation, Ring of Dust by Louise Marois, was published in 2025. A Shadbolt Fellow in the humanities at Simon Fraser University, Bradford is currently pursuing a book and oral history project about money and housing in the lives of artists.
Domenica Martinello
Domenica Martinello is the author of Good Want (Coach House Books, 2024) and All Day I Dream about Sirens (CHB, 2019). The titular poem of Good Want won The Malahat Review’s Long Poem Prize, and the collection was longlisted for the 2025 Pat Lowther Award. Her work has twice appeared in Best Canadian Poetry, and she was awarded the carte blanche 3Macs Prize for nonfiction.
She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was granted the Provost Fellowship and the Deena Davidson Friedman Prize for Poetry. Her poems, reviews, and literary essays have been published widely in Canada and the United States. Domenica has contributed to the literary community as a juror, workshop facilitator, and member of the Board of Directors of the Quebec Writers’ Federation. She lives in Montreal.
