The Gallery of Human Migration Literary Award
Honouring journeys of courage, change, and connection.
In its inaugural year, the Gallery of Human Migration Literary Award shines a light on original writing that deepens our understanding of migration, its challenges, courage, and unexpected moments of belonging.
Below, meet this year’s award recipients and read their work. We’re grateful to every writer who shared a story, and to the jurors who read with care.
How selections were made:
Our volunteer jury reviewed all eligible submissions in a blind process using criteria focused on voice, craft, and insight into the migration experience.
2025 Grand Prize Winner
Mohamed Hammoud
Mohamed Hammoud is a Lebanese-born author, TEDx speaker, and community advocate whose journey from Lebanon to Canada inspires his writing.
He is the author of The Return of the Prophet, a work that blends poetry and resistance literature, inspired by Kahlil Gibran’s classic, The Prophet. Mohamed explores themes of exile, identity, belonging, and resistance via writing that includes diaspora stories, spiritual reflections, and contemporary poetry rooted in heritage. Drawing on lived experience and cultural depth, he invites readers to find courage, meaning, and hope in an increasingly fractured world. Hammoud lives in London, Ontario, with his wife and children.
“Belonging means showing up as your full self, name intact, history honoured, faith respected. Silence asked me to fragment myself, to leave pieces behind so I could be accepted.”
2025 Honourable Mentions
Ana-Maria Posada-Borda
Ana-Maria Posada-Borda is an 18-year-old Colombian student completing her Social Sciences CEGEP diploma at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf, as she prepares to begin university in the fall of 2026. Born and raised in Montréal, a multicultural city that has shaped her curiosity, open-mindedness, and love for languages, Ana-Maria thrives on new challenges. She has participated in Model United Nations conferences, taken part in mock trials, and taught French classes to immigrants — experiences that have strengthened her communication skills, critical thinking, and ability to collaborate with people from diverse backgrounds.
Her interest in global issues, political systems, and law has inspired her to pursue university studies in law or a related field in politics. Outside of academics, Ana-Maria enjoys reading music critiques, following football, and travelling — passions that continually inspire her writing, an endeavour she has nurtured for as long as she can remember. She is especially grateful to share her travels with her mother; among their many adventures, her favourite so far has been Japan, though she’s always planning the next one!
“Belonging, I realized, wasn't about forgetting the past but accepting it. It is the instant when a location becomes home, not because you cut yourself off from where you came from, but because you allow it to take hold along with others.”
Irene Yi
Irene (Fan) Yi is a bilingual playwright, dramaturg, and performer whose work explores diaspora, identity, and the dissonance between language and belonging. With a background in Theatre Studies (MA, University of Ottawa) and Arts Administration (MA, Indiana University), she creates interdisciplinary works that blend poetic text, projection, and sound to examine how systemic violence shapes the body and memory. Irene has worked as a director, dramaturg, and performer in productions such as The Reaper and The Whale (Davis Shakespeare Festival), The Pillowman (Indiana University Bloomington), Night, Mother, Twelfth Night, and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Her plays include I Have a Dream in Chinese, Human Acts, and Space Unknown, and have been developed or presented through the Advance Theatre Festival, Black Theatre Workshop, and the Human Migration Literary Award. Her work is driven by a commitment to experimental forms, sensory storytelling, and the exploration of existential themes in contemporary theatre.
“My name is Fan. My name is Ivy. I am from Wuhan. I am from Ottawa. I am both. Maybe… I’m still arriving.”
Keiko Honda
Dr. Keiko Honda’s journey, shaped by a Ph.D. in International Community Health (NYU) and a career as a cancer epidemiologist at Columbia University, took an unexpected turn at age 40, when a diagnosis of a rare autoimmune disease resulted in her lifelong use of a wheelchair. This transformative experience revealed to her the profound power of social support. In 2009, she brought her vision to Vancouver, turning her home into a vibrant hub for artists through her salon series and earning the City of Vancouver’s 2014 Remarkable Women award. This led to the founding of the Vancouver Arts Colloquium Society (VACS), where she cultivates intergenerational connections and empowers marginalized voices through artistic expression. Her unwavering dedication to the community was honoured with the King Charles III Coronation Medal in 2025. Currently, she teaches the aesthetics of co-creation and arts-based problem-solving at SFU’s Continuing Studies, championing the transformative power of community and the arts. Her compelling narrative is woven into her debut memoir, Accidental Blooms (Caitlin Press, 2023), and continues in Hidden Flowers (Heritage House, 2025). She is also the author of The Broken Map Home (Caitlin Press, 2025). Keiko resides in Vancouver, BC, where she finds joy in watercolour painting and her beloved salons.
“I believe it is in embracing our identity as artists that we ultimately find this sense of belonging.”
Morsal Yakuby
Morsal Yakuby is a young emerging artist who works in a variety of media, including pencil, pen and ink, ink and wash, acrylics, oils, and charcoal. She is proficient in Adobe Photoshop and Corel Painter. She tends to draw mostly portrait pieces in a post-impressionistic style. She is based in Toronto, Ontario.
“No matter where we come from there is a core human connection that binds us all together. Assimilating doesn’t mean abandoning our old cultures, it means integrating the best part of it into the new one.”
The Prairie Collective
The Prairie Collective is a collaboration between two South Asian artists and writers based in Vancouver, whose shared practice weaves together storytelling, photography, and memory work to illuminate the layered experiences of migration. The collective explores how family archives, oral histories, and everyday rituals may uplift the incomplete nature of remembering.
“We approach storytelling as an act of reclamation and opacity, honouring the persistence of narratives that resist linear tracing—those that survive through fragments, gestures, and memory. Our emblem reflects this collective support and shared authorship.”
“Migration is not the edge of a story. It is the centre. The beginning, again and again.”
Elisa Bryce
Growing up on a hobby farm near Hamilton, Ontario, Elisa developed a love of animals and nature. She spent years teaching violin and fiddle lessons while studying English Literature, History, and Communications at the post-secondary level. Married to her highschool sweetheart, she has been a military spouse for over 24 years. Her family has moved across Canada several times. Elisa currently lives near Edmonton, Alberta.
“History is a tune that gets remixed and repeated.”
Brenna Tomas
Brenna Tomas is an artist, writer, and mother based in Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario. Her multidisciplinary practice explores themes of identity, resilience, migration, and gender dynamics through a deeply personal lens shaped by her Canadian heritage and lived experience within patriarchal, spiritual, and secular systems.
Working across both visual and written forms, Tomas approaches art as a means of inquiry—translating the multilayered nature of human experience into material and conceptual expression. Her work often inhabits the spaces between belonging and displacement, memory and materiality, weaving contemporary practices with references to art history, ethics, and diverse modes of storytelling.
Tomas holds a diploma in Recreation Therapy from Canadore College, a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Art History and Studio Arts with Distinction from Concordia University, and a Master of Education with a specialization in Teaching and Learning from the University of Ottawa. In addition to her artistic practice, she has worked extensively across education, health, and community sectors—including local boards and non-profit organizations—where she integrates creativity and empathy into supportive and transformative environments.
“My Nonna’s story of migration and endurance illustrates how home can be built and rebuilt through resilience.”