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Moni Brar has published in many of the most respected journals in Canada and received a number of the top writing awards. A Punjabi Canadian writer exploring diasporan guilt and intergenerational trauma, she is poised to make major contributions to the literary arts in Canada.
– Emerging Artist adjudicators
Moni Brar is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in rural India to a long lineage of subsistence farmers. After working in 12 countries, she now gratefully lives as an uninvited settler in Mohkínsstsisi (colonially know as Calgary). Her creative work explores the connections of time, place and identity in the immigrant experience, diasporic guilt, religious violence, and the legacy of trauma resulting from colonization. She believes art contains the possibility of healing.
She has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and multiple Best of the Net awards and was the winner of the SAAG Arts Writing Prize, runner-up in PRISM international’s Grouse Grind Prize, honourable mention in Room magazine’s Poetry Prize, and a finalist in the Alberta Magazine Awards and the Subnivean Awards. Her work can be found in Best Canadian Poetry 2022, the Literary Review of Canada, Passages North, Prairie Fire, Hobart, and the League of Canadian Poets’ “Poem in Your Pocket” postcard series. She is an alum of the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and Humber School for Writers and a member of the editorial collective of New Forum Magazine.
Queen Elizabeth II’s Platinum Jubilee Medal 2022
© 2025 the Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards
