06/24/2025
Congratulations to one of our staunchest supporters and exquisite anthology contributor, Rona Altrows, on winning the Grindstone Prize! 🎉🎉🎉
We are thrilled to announce that the 2025 winner of the $50,000 Prairie Grindstone Prize is Rona Altrows!
Rona Altrows is a fiction writer, essayist, editor, and playwright who believes that literature has a critical role in the fight for social justice and the advancement of humanism. Her books of short fiction are A Run on Hose, Key in Lock, and At This Juncture. Her writing honours include the W.O. Mitchell Book Prize for A Run on Hose, the Jon Whyte Memorial Essay Award, and the inaugural Brenda Strathern Award. Rona has edited or co-edited four theme-based anthologies, including You Look Good for Your Age (University of Alberta Press), an exploration of women, aging, and ageism. Please Don't Interrupt, edited by Rona and Uchechukwu Peter Umezurike (Griots Lounge Publishing Canada) is a new anthology to be released in fall of 2025, that digs deep into the notion of interruption.
"Deeply honoured to receive this generous award. Most of my contact with other writers is one-to-one, as a friend or editor or encourager,” Rona says. “That's pretty well my way of being, and it feels good to have it recognized as community engagement.”
The judges this year were Wendy McGrath, Rosemary Griebel, and Jeremy Morgan.
Wendy McGrath says: “Rona Altrows is deserving of the 2025 Prairie Grindstone Prize not only because her long writing career demonstrates her talent in multiple genres—fiction, playwriting, poetry, and non-fiction—and her commitment to supporting both emerging and established writers. She has edited several anthologies highlighting the work of authors at various stages of their practice and generously gives back to the writing community through her mentorship, activism, and ongoing support.”
