Armand Ruffo, Queen’s National Scholar in Indigenous Literature and professor in the Department of English, is this year’s winner of the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize, it was announced on Wednesday, Dec. 2.

The $25,000 prize is awarded to a mid-career poet in recognition of a remarkable body of work, and in anticipation of future contributions to Canadian poetry.

“To receive this award from my peers who in their own right are highly respected poets is truly an honour,” Ruffo says. “Above all it is further validation of my artistic practice and it tells me to keep at it. By nature of the work writers tend to fall into periods of silence and I think of this award as a hammer to help me break through those periods.”

An Anishinaabe scholar, filmmaker, writer, and poet, Ruffo has received numerous awards over his career and has twice been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards – 2019 for his poetry collection Treaty # and in 2015 for his book Norval Morrisseau: Man Changing Into Thunderbird.

Ruffo has also written three plays and has written, directed and produced a short film and a feature film.

Listen to his interview for Latner’s Writers’ Trust with Kaie Kellough, one of the prize jurors.