Joseph S. Stauffer Prizes

Current Winners

Marie-Andrée Gill (Literature)

Marie-Andrée Gill is a Pekuakamishkueu (Ilnue du Lac-Saint-Jean, from Mashteuiatsh, Quebec) author, poet and host of decolonizing podcasts. She teaches Indigenous literature at the University of Ottawa and recently completed a master’s thesis on decolonization through intimate writing and her relationship to ancestral territory. 

Teiya Kasahara (Music)

Nikkei-Canadian settler Teiya Kasahara 笠原貞野 (they/them) is a queer, trans non-binary, interdisciplinary creator-performer based in Tkarón:to. Heralded as “an artist with extraordinary things to say” (The Globe and Mail), Teiya comes from a background of over a decade of singing both traditional and contemporary operatic roles across North America and Europe, and explores the intersections of identity through opera, theatre, and electronics in their original works such as The Queen in Me, 夜 YORU, The Butterfly Project and Little Mis(s)gender.

To learn more about the artist and their work, visit their website.

Esmaa Mohamoud (Visual Arts)

Esmaa Mohamoud is a Toronto-based African-Canadian artist. She holds a BFA from Western University (2014) and an MFA from OCAD University (2016). Recently, Mohamoud has exhibited works at the Art Gallery of Ontario, the Royal Ontario Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts Montreal and the University of Michigan’s Institute for the Humanities Gallery. Upcoming solo exhibitions include To Play in the Face of Certain Defeat, which will be travelling from Museum London to the Art Gallery of Hamilton, the Ottawa Art Gallery and the Winnipeg Art Gallery, and The Art Gallery of Alberta; and It Cannot Always Be Night, at Arsenal Contemporary Art, in New York City.

To learn more about the artist and her work, visit her website.