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.
Our volunteer jury reviewed all eligible submissions in a blind process using criteria focused on voice, craft, and insight into the migration experience.
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.”
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 (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.”
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 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 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.”
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 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.”
The Gallery of Human Migration Literary Award celebrates the enduring power of migration stories.
The 2025 inaugural edition is in tribute to two lives, Danny Montesano, founder of Lido Construction, and his wife, Madeleine Brazeau.
The Award uplifts narratives that reflect resilience, transformation, and the deeply human experience of movement and belonging.
A full professor, Roberto Perin obtained his doctorate in history from the University of Ottawa. He has taught at the Universities of Edinburg and York and was director of the Canadian Academic Centre in Italy (Rome). A specialist of immigration, he was vice-president of the Italian committee of the Community Historical Recognition Programme, established by the federal government, and historical consultant for the exhibitions at the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21. An expert as well in Canadian religious history, he has often been a commentator for Radio Canada on questions involving immigration, cultural and religious diversity, as well as reasonable accommodation.
Ian Martin is an anglophone Settler, born and raised in Toronto. Graduated with an MA degree in Russian Literature and an ABD in Russian Linguistics from the University of Toronto. He has been a member of the English Department at the College universitaire Glendon College, York University, in Toronto since 1975, where he has taught English as a Second Language, Language Learning, Language Policy and EIL Methodology. In the 1990s, he created the Certificate in the Discipline of the Teaching of English as an International Language (Cert D-TEIL) and coordinated it until 2020. He has taught English in Greece, Italy, China, Singapore and Cuba and has written and co-written numerous articles on ELT, including a book (1992) An Invitation to Explore ESP (RELC Singapore). He has been involved in the revitalization of Indigenous languages, especially in Ontario and Nunavut, where his policy paper on English-Inuktitut bilingual education Aajiiqatigiingniq (Nunavut Dept of Education, 2001) helped produce a framework for Nunavut’s bilingual education policy. He co-edited, with Brian Morgan and Ruberval Maciel. His main project today is co-editing a book with Amos Key Jr. on Canada’s Indigenous Languages Policy.
John Lorinc is a Toronto journalist and editor. He writes about cities, housing, climate and technology for various media, including The Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, Corporate Knights and Spacing, where he is senior editor. John is the author of five books, including No Jews Live Here: A Memoir (Coach House Books, 2024) and the recipient of the 2023 Writer’s Trust Balsillie Aware for Public Policy, for Dream States: Smart Cities, Technology and the Pursuit of Urban Utopias. He has also edited or co-edited seven anthologies published as part of Coach House Books’ uTOpia series, including The Ward: The Life and Loss of Toronto’s First Immigrant Neighbourhood (2015).
Sun-Kyung (Sunny) Yi is a documentary filmmaker, journalist, and educator whose work, shaped by her Korean-Canadian identity, explores themes of immigration, multiculturalism, and belonging. She holds an M.A. in History (focused on Canadian immigration history). She has contributed many hours of radio documentaries for CBC’s IDEAS, and her award-winning documentary films have been broadcast worldwide She is the founder of the Documentary Filmmaking Institute at Seneca Polytechnic, where she is Professor and Program Coordinator.
Susana P. Miranda is the co-author of Cleaning Up: Portuguese Women’s Fight for Labour Rights in Toronto (Toronto: Between the Lines Press, 2023) with Franca Iacovetta, which won the Leo Panitch Book Prize (Canadian labour history), the Alison Prentice Award for Canadian Women’s History, the Mayworks Labour Arts Award, and was short-listed for the Legislative Assembly of Ontario Speaker’s Book Award, 2023. Susana co-founded the Portuguese-Canadian History Project in 2008, which aims to preserve, digitize and provide access to historical materials that are vital for understanding the contributions of the Portuguese community in Canada. She currently works for the Ontario Ministry of Education.
The 2025 Gallery of Human Migration Literary Awardis the first formal recognition of the artistic expression of the migration experience offered by the Gallery of Human Migration.
It was created to honour individuals who tell their migration story through writing, offering new insight into the emotional, social, and cultural realities of relocation. The award is named in memory of two individuals whose lives and legacies embody courage, empathy, and the pursuit of meaningful connection across communities.
The sculptural award, created by artist Ester Crocetta, reflects this vision:
“This sculptural piece embodies the essence of migration through its fluid yet fragmented form. Cast in a luminous white material, it suggests both resilience and transformation, evoking the journey of individuals, both physical and metaphysical. This piece is not just an award; it is a symbol of the ever-evolving narrative of migration.”
Our motto “I’M MIGRATION” is also a play on words.
On one hand, it means “I am Migration.” On the other hand, if you drop the apostrophe, it becomes IMMIGRATION—“the process of moving to.”
The Gallery’s mission is to recover and celebrate the positive value and transformative power of migration in reshaping people, cultures, and territories. We don’t focus on immigration or emigration as fixed categories. Instead, it speaks of movement, the essence of the migratory process. We don’t frame migration by ethnicity or historical periods, but by its universality: migration is the eternal movement at the core of human nature. Movement is the act of being born, of coming into the world. Movement is the creative spark that generates an idea. Each of us, therefore, carries a migration story to tell—woven from dreams, departure, acceptance, and belonging.
Migration is more than the physical act of moving or the structures that make it possible. Migration reflects the dynamic relationship between our human experience and the environment, where the interplay of emotions and memories shapes our connection both to the places we leave behind and those we come to call home.
Migration is a human right, an inseparable part of human nature, and multiculturalism is the natural outcome of this creative and transformative force.
The Gallery of Human Migration Literary Award was born from this vision. By honouring migration stories, the award recognizes not only the courage of movement but also the creativity, resilience, and sense of belonging that emerge from it—values that the Gallery believes lie at the very heart of our shared humanity.
To be considered, your story must meet the following requirements:
Originality and Creativity
Does the story offer a unique perspective or creative approach to the migration experience?
Authenticity and Emotional Impact
Does the story feel personal, honest, and emotionally resonant? We value stories that show real human experience — the moments of pain, strength, confusion, and hope that shape every journey.
Clarity and Structure
Is the story clearly written, organized, and engaging to read?
Cultural and Social Insight
Does the story offer meaningful insight into cultural, social, or historical dimensions of migration? We value stories that build bridges — opening windows into different worlds while connecting us through shared humanity.
Resonance with the Themes
How deeply does the story align with the 4Bs Framework below?
Every journey begins with a feeling, a pull toward something unknown. Beckoning is that inner spark, a longing not for the past, but for what lies ahead. It’s the whisper that says, “There is more for you out there.”
Beginning is about learning to live in a new world. It’s the moment when everything is unfamiliar; language, customs, even silence. But it’s also the moment of wonder, where every step is part of building your new life.
Belonging is when the new place feels like home. It’s not about forgetting the past, but finding peace with it. Here, your journey becomes part of who you are, not just where you’re from, but where you’ve arrived.
Grand Prize
The Grand Prize winner will receive a faithful reproduction of the sculpture created by artist Ester Crocetta, a tangible echo of the artwork that embodies the Award’s spirit.
Honourable Mentions
Those recognized will receive exclusive sketches of the sculpture.
Visibility
All submissions suitable for publication and meeting the requirements will be celebrated on the Gallery website.
Legacy
Every story contributes to a greater understanding of migration’s role in shaping humanity and builds a shared, culturally rich vision of migration.
If you have questions about these rules or the submission process, please email Nancy Perin no later than July 1, 2025, at 11:59 PM (EST).
Grand Prize:
As a symbol of recognition, the Grand Prize winner will receive a faithful reproduction of the sculpture designed by Ester Crocetta, a tangible echo of the artwork that embodies the Award’s spirit.
Honourable Mentions:
Will receive exclusive sketches of the sculpture.
Visibility:
All submissions will be celebrated on the Gallery website.
Legacy:
Your story contributes to a greater understanding of migration’s role in shaping humanity, allowing a positive and culturally nourishing vision of migration.
The deadline is April 30, 2025, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern Standard Time.
For the 2025 edition, results will be announced to participating authors on October 8 via email, and to the public on November 1 on the website.
For the 2025 edition, manuscripts must be submitted via email to events@galleryofhumanmigration.org
We accept unique personal or ancestral migration stories.
An entry must not exceed 4,500 words.
No, an entry must be unpublished at the time of submission.
Yes. Tell your story through written words. You may also include up to three poems in the body of the story, and three visual artworks in a separate file. For more details, please read the technical requirements.
No, please omit all personal information from the manuscript itself (i.e., name, address, email address, phone number), as stories are read blindly by the Jury.
Please, read the Content Submission Policy.
No, once a story is submitted, we cannot accept an updated draft.
No. The 2025 inaugural competition is free to enter.
The 2025 inaugural competition is open only to Canadian citizens and permanent residents (including those living abroad).
To update any contact information in your entry record, please email us at events@galleryofhumanmigration.org
Stay connected with The Gallery of Human Migration by subscribing to our monthly e-newsletter!
Your story of migration, the one inherited, lived, and witnessed across generations, has a place here. The Tapestry, the 2026 edition of the Gallery’s Migration Literary Award, is an international recognition and publication initiative honouring personal and ancestral stories. Every selected voice is honoured equally. No rankings, no podium. Submissions open March 31 and close August 31, 2026.
