The Capilano Review is pleased to announce the winner of our 2025 Spring Writing Contest as selected by guest judge Wayde Compton. The winning work is “Breathless” by V.M. Ellis. 

“This poem feels subjectively bigger than it objectively is, both for the way in which it fills the page with its sprawling syntax, which seems to hypertext within its own verse, and for its multiple registers and functions: it is fragmented and prismatic, yet also narrative; it expresses language materially and recursively, yet it elucidates characters; it resists image and sentiment, yet you see it, you feel it. The poet has written a flash epic.” 
– Wayde Compton

About the winner:

V.M. Ellis’s (she/her) poetry and fiction explore lived realities of gender-based violence, precarious work, and poverty. Her vocation as a feminist anti-poverty community organizer supports ending all trafficking, destigmatising sex work, and support for the health, safety, and well-being of all sex workers. V.M. Ellis writes on stolen xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nation territories in Vancouver

The Capilano Review would like to extend additional congratulations to the shortlisted writers:

Claire Farley for “4 X 4”

Pari Mokradi for “Zone1_bylaw/.body/.soul”

The winning work will be published in The Capilano Review in 2026.