“Paula Turcotte is an emerging poet with extraordinary promise, already carving out a place for her strong voice. Her poetry has sophisticated elegance and rich humour that demonstrates a fine craft. She writes about daily life, but life told with a sharp eye on the delicious ironies that abound in quiet moments. She attends to the disconnect between minutia and the cosmological, while, in between, the body winks knowingly. The poems are a delight.”
— 2026 Emerging Artist Jury
– Emerging Artist adjudicators
Paula Turcotte writes both poetry and prose. In her work, she twists the familiar and explores the idea of ‘versions of the self’, alongside themes of bodies, religion and religious trauma, existentialism, pop culture, gender and bisexuality, the natural world, family dynamics, and the surreal. Her writing has been described as “lively, humourous, and full of dread.” Malahat Review Editorial Board.
Paula’s poetry has been widely published in numerous journals and magazines from 2023 to the present. Her debut chapbook Permutations (Baseline Press, July 2024) was a finalist for the 2025 bpNichol Chapbook Award. Her poems have been shortlisted for The Malahat Review’s Far Horizons Award for Poetry and longlisted in ROOM’s Poetry Contest. Her work appears in Canthius, PRISM international, and CV2, among other publications. Paula holds a MSt (Distinction) in Creative Writing from the University of Oxford, a BEd in Secondary Education from the University of Alberta, and a BA in English-Poetry Writing from the University of Virginia. She is at work on her debut novel (2026).
Paula Turcotte’s increasing number of publishing successes and awards-recognition across a versatile number of formats speak eloquently not only for the achievement and promise of her work but also for the integrity and range of her experiment in both language and form.
Jane Draycott
Senior Associate Tutor, Master of Studies, Creative Writing, Oxford University
