Download Amelia Bowes wins Fresh Ink Award

Amelia Bowes wins Fresh Ink Award
Thursday, April 17, 2014
Redeemer student takes first prize in Word Guild
competition
Amelia Bowes, a third-year student from Merrickville,
ON, placed first in the 14 to 25 year-old category in
The Word Guild’s Fresh Ink novice Writing Contest.
Formerly known as God Uses Ink, the contest is
sponsored by The Word Guild, an association of
Canadian Christian writers and editors, to recognize
the talents of aspiring writers who have never been published.
For the contest, Amelia submitted a poem entitled “Trauma Sessions,” which she says came out of a very
dark place she was in earlier this semester. “I knew these issues were holding me back in several areas of
my life, and the poem really came from me coming to the realization that I had to deal with them in order to
fully flourish into the person God is steadily calling me to be.”
Amelia says that ever since she was a kid, “I’ve loved words and the way they sound and fit together,” and
cites authors such as writers like Raymond Carver, Ernest Hemmingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Flannery
O’Connor and Allen Ginsberg as having the biggest influences on her work. “In beautiful words they
communicate the ugliest sides of humanity, and aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty in the process. This is
something that I really admire and I think is needed, especially among the Christian community.
For winning the award, Amelia has been given free registration to the Write Canada national conference this
spring in Guelph. Her future plans include either being the next J.K. Rowling or pursuing journalism, an
interest that was tweaked by taking a journalism class this year. However, she is open to a number of
options: “’Man plans God laughs’ right? I’m willing to see where the future takes me.”
“I’m equally honoured and surprised to winning the award,” she says. “To be honest I did not think this
piece was my best work at all, but I guess I’ve learned an important lesson in underestimating myself.”