This year, VR made its mark at the National Magazine Awards with Roxanna Bikadoroff’s Gold win in the Illustration category for her Asian-inspired “Floating Like the Dead,” as well as with Oliver Kellhammer’s Honourable Mention in the Fiction category for his dystopian Blueprint BC short story about North Pacific factory fishing, “Crush.”

VR also published two finalists for this year’s Journey Prize, which is awarded annually to the best short story by an emerging writer published in a Canadian magazine—Danielle Egan’s “Publicity” and Andrew Boden’s “Confluence of Spoors,” both from VR’s Blueprint BC Fiction Series. The winner will be announced this fall, and all finalists included in McClelland & Stewart’s annual anthology.

Last but not least, VR has received a record 11 nominations for the Western Magazine Awards! Timothy Taylor’s delightful dishing on Vancouver food culture, “Foodville: Part One,” is nominated in a total of four writing categories: Arts, Culture and Entertainment; Travel and Leisure; Gold Award for Best Article—BC/Yukon; and—along with Parts Two and Three—for Regular Column. “Vision Deficit,” architecture critic Trevor Boddy’s essay on the built legacy of the Winter 2010 Olympics, is in the running for multiple writing categories as well: Public Issues and Gold Award for Best Article—BC/Yukon. Terry Glavin’s heartfelt letter from Afghanistan, “Taqunya,” is nominated in the Travel and Leisure category, and Mette Bach’s revealing feature on teaching ESL, “Lessons in English,” is up for Student Writing. On the visual side, VR’s chief photographer and Creative Director Mark Mushet has nominations in both Still-life (for an image of Bono’s shockingly vast tour-truck fleet) and People and Portraiture (for a shot of bike binner Chris Jensen from the “Velo-City” series) photo categories, while Sonny Assu snagged an Illustration Feature nomination for his digital melding of Kwakwaka’wakw legend and Manga style, “iHamatsa Rising.” Congratulations all, and good luck at the October 15 awards!

Yasuko Thanh has won the 2009 Journey Prize for Floating Like the Dead, published in the Winter 2009 issue of VR! The Journey Prize is awarded for the best short story by an emerging writer published in a Canadian magazine. Congratulations!

This year, VR took home one 2009 Western Magazine Award and occupied a further eight finalist spots, Roxanna Bikadoroff won in the illustration category for “Brutish Colonia”, her interpretation of an in-house gang brainstorming session to create an absurdist map of BC in time for the province’s 150th anniversary. Bikadoroff had two further nominations in the same category. Congratulations on her sweep!

VR was also a finalist for Magazine of the Year-BC/Yukon. Individual contributors made their mark in a wide variety of categories. Both Grant Buday and Barbara Stowe were finalists for Human Experience writing— for “Wood Hunger” and “A Greenpeace Schooling” respectively—while Matt Hern’s essay “No Recipe For Funk” was a finalist for the Gold Award Best Article-BC/Yukon.

On the visual side, Mark Mushet's portrait of theatre director Kim Collier made the finalist cut for Best Photograph-People and Portraiture, and he shared the honours as a finalist, along with designer Dylan Staniul, for Best Art Direction-Cover for “Mr. Invisible.”

VR is pleased to report remarkable results in the 2008 magazine-awards season.

From the National Magazine Awards, Terry Glavin took home a Silver Medal in the Essays category for his personal and historical inquiry into the first generation of BC’s Chinese immigrants, “Looking for Mr. Bing.” Charlotte Gill received an Honourable Mention in the same category for a heady and beautifully written account of her tree-planting odysseys, “Eating Dirt,” while Mark Mushet received an Honorable Mention in Portrait Photography for his red-alert shot of Vancouver musician Veda Hille.

The Western Magazine Awards were no less fruitful, with two winners and four no less deserving finalists. Charlotte Gill was named top dog in the human experience category for her aforementioned piece, and VR’s former designer Marian Bantes was crowned Illustration Feature queen for “My Dear, Can We Work Together?”, inspired by a common strain of florid spam. (You can view and purchase Marian’s award winning work on our Web Exclusives page—Gallery 1, Image 2). Our four finalists included Annabel Lyon in the Fiction Category for “Summit,” her imagined free-trade fiasco on the UBC campus; Bonnie Bowman for “Silence of the Pigs,” a reflection on the brutal realities behind BC’s missing-women murder case, and Terry Glavin for the aforementioned article, both in the Gold Award for Best Article—BC/Yukon category; and finally, Mark Mushet in the portrait category for the aforementioned shot.

Congratulations all, you make us proud!

April 26, 2008
VR was featured in the Globe & Mail this weekend, as the lead item in James Adams’ weekly “Best Magazine Reads on the Racks” column, taking special notice of Matt Hern’s cover feature “No Recipe for Funk.” Congratulations Matt!
Click HERE to read the clipping.

Western Magazine Awards.
John Moore took first place in the Travel and Leisure category for “Sporting Life,” his philosophical and funny essay about the regional popularity of adventure sports. Our finalists included first-time VR contributor Michael Harris for “No-Name City” in the Arts, Culture and Entertainment category, a piece that went looking for the city’s soul on local theatre stages. We also boasted two finalists in the Gold Award Best Article—BC/Yukon category: Moore’s aforementioned article and Terry Glavin’s “Lost Cities,” a layered investigation (with a personal twist) into the archaeology of Burnaby’s Metrotown.