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Of Kate Black’s essay “Animals”, one judge wrote, “This is essay-writing the way the best essayists tackle it: sprawling and disciplined, intimate and global. I learned something with every page, and I relished Kate’s phrasing in each paragraph. Kate sees past the surface narrative to the underlying one, then underneath that, another. And another … This is the work of someone whose writing gives us the chance to understand ourselves at levels we didn’t know we had.”
– Emerging Artist adjudicators
Kate Black was born and raised in St. Albert, AB – and, as a result, spent a lot of time at West Edmonton Mall. Growing up in and around the world’s once-largest mall inspired her to write her first book: Big Mall: Shopping for Meaning. Published in February 2024 with Coach House Books, Big Mall blends a social history of shopping with her own coming-of-age to investigate what it means to become oneself in these banal and spectacular structures.
Kate’s short fiction and essays have appeared in publications including Maisonneuve, The New Quarterly, The Walrus, and The Globe and Mail. In 2020, she was selected as one of Canada’s top emerging voices in non-fiction by the RBC Taylor Prize and the National Magazine Awards. Later that year, she completed her Master of Fine Arts in creative writing at the University of British Columbia. Kate currently lives in Vancouver, where she works as a high school English and social studies teacher.
Kate has what I consider to be one of the best qualities of an artist, a gift for turning the particular minutae of her experience into vast considerations of our collective experience. She is a consistently surprising thinker, her intelligence subsumed into a subtly forceful style and leavened by the sort of wit that keeps you standing in the kitchen at a housewarming party.
David Berry, Editor, Coach House Books
© 2025 the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards
