5 Canadian emerging writers named 2025 Writers' Trust rising stars

Allison Graves, Zilla Jones, Dilan Qadir, Liz Stewart and Isabella Wang have been named the 2025 Writers' Trust of Canada's Rising Stars.

Launched in 2019, the Writers' Trust Rising Stars program is an initiative supporting Canadian writers early in their careers. Each year, five talented emerging writers are chosen and mentored by prominent Canadian authors.

The recipients also receive $5,000 and attend a two-week self-directed writing residency at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts on the Toronto Islands.

Graves is a Newfoundland-based writer and musician. Soft Serve, her debut fiction collection, was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award. Her work has appeared in The Antigonish Review, Riddle Fence Magazine and Room Magazine.

Her fiction has been longlisted for prizes in Prism, The Fiddlehead and The Newfoundland Quarterly. She is completing her PhD in Irish Literature and teaches at Memorial University. 

Graves will be mentored by Michael Crummey. Crummey is the Newfoundland-based author of The Adversary, which is nominated for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award, The Innocents, Sweetland, Galore and Arguments with Gravity and Passengers. Three of Crummey's novels have been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction — Sweetland, Galore and The Innocents.

• Michael Crummey's latest novel digs into the inner world of power-hungry characters on the East Coast

"Allison Graves' writing is generous even when it bites, and it's hilarious as often as it is sobering, which makes her a joy to read," said Crummey in a press statement. 

LISTEN | Michael Crummey talks The Adversary with Shelagh Rogers at Woody Point Writers Festival 2023: 

The Next Chapter13:17Sibling rivalry is at the heart of Michael Crummey’s new novel, The Adversary

The Newfoundland author tells a story of a brother and sister who run the largest mercantile firms in the North Atlantic. As animosity and violence grows between the pair, their community becomes increasingly divided.

Jones is an author based in Winnipeg. She's won many literary awards including the Journey Prize, the Malahat Review Open Season Award, the Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction and the FreeFall short fiction award. Her debut novel, The World So Wide, was released in April 2025. 

Jones made the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Our Father and has longlisted twice for her story How to Make a Friend, in 2022 and 2023; in 2024, Jones was included on the CBC Short Story Prize shortlist. The same year, Jones made the longlist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize.

She was also named a writer to watch by CBC Books in 2024.

• Zilla Jones' debut novel explores a mixed-race woman's search for identity and belonging

The CBC Poetry Prize is open now until June 1. The winner receives $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and their work will be published on CBC Books. You can learn more here. 

Jones will be mentored by Charlotte Gill, a B.C.-based writer of Indian and English descent. She is the author of memoirs Almost Brown and Eating Dirt, which won the B.C. National Award for Canadian Nonfiction.

Her short story collection, Ladykiller, was nominated for a Governor General's Literary Award. She currently teaches writing at the University of King's College. She lives in British Columbia.

• Charlotte Gill explores fraught familial relationships and mixed heritage in her memoir

"Zilla Jones' scenes are ingeniously imagined and beautifully written with rewards that endure long after the last page has turned," said Gill a press statement. 

LISTEN | Charlotte Gill discusses her memoir Almost Brown: 

The Next Chapter20:13Charlotte Gill reflects on growing up mixed race in her memoir Almost Brown

Born to a South Asian father and an English mother raised by nuns, the B.C. author reckons with ethnicity, belonging and the complexities of life within a multicultural household in her latest book.

Qadir is a Kurdish-Canadian writer based in Vancouver. His work, which spans poetry, fiction and nonfiction, has been published in Wax Poetry and Art, Quae Nocent Docent Anthology and The Fiddlehead.

He was longlisted for the Vera Manuel Award for Poetry and received the PEN Canada-Humber College Writers-in-Exile Scholarship. 

Qadir will be mentored by Rabindranath Maharaj, the author of several novels and short story collections. His latest is the short story collection A Quiet Disappearance. Maharaj's novel The Amazing Absorbing Boy won both the Toronto Book Award and the Trillium Book Award. He has previously been nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The Chapters First Novel Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. 

In January 2013, he was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. His work has also appeared in The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star.

• Rabindranath Maharaj reveals his heroes and greatest achievement

"Dilan Qadir's keen observational eye, his ability to blend humour and trauma, his understanding of the historical forces that shape our world, and the authenticity of his writing all evoke admiration," said Maharaj in a press statement.

Stewart is a writer from Manitoba who currently lives in B.C. She won the This Side of West 2021 Prose and Poetry Contest and has been published in Best Canadian Stories 2025, Plenitude Magazine, carte blanche and Camas Magazine.

Stewart will be mentored by Casey Plett, the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, A Safe Girl to Love. She is a winner of the Amazon First Novel Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction and a two-time winner of the Lambda Literary Award. Her work has also been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Plett splits her time between New York City and Windsor, Ont.

• Casey Plett's latest book explores the essence of community — and the power of lived experience

"Liz Stewart's work is honest and beautiful — real, singular, and urgent," said Plett in a press statement. "Stewart is making something intimate that anyone can believe and see."

Wang is the writer of chapbook On Forgetting a Language and Pebble Swing, which was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for Arc's Poem of the year Content, The Malahat Review's Far Horizons Awards for Poetry and Long Poem Contest, Minola Review's Inaugural Poetry Contest and twice for the New Quarterly's Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest.

She lives in B.C. and directs Revise-Revision Street, a nonprofit editing and mentorship program. 

Wang will be mentored by Joseph Dandurand, a poet from the Kwantlen First Nation. His collections include The East Side of It All, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, The Rumour, SH:LAM (The Doctor) and I Will Be Corrupted. He is the director of the Kwantlen Cultural Centre and the artistic director of the Vancouver Poetry House. In 2019, he won the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize. 

• Joseph A. Dandurand shares his misery, joy and laughter in poetry collection The East Side of It All

"Isabella Wang demonstrates immense promise as she constructs more of herself," said Dandurand in a press statement. "There will be great poetry created by such creativity and resourcefulness." 

The Writers' Trust of Canada is an organization that supports Canadian writers through literary awards, fellowships, financial grants, mentorships and more. It gives out 11 prizes in recognition of the year's best in fiction, nonfiction and short story, as well as mid-career and lifetime achievement awards.

The Writers' Trust Rising Stars program is supported by presenting sponsor BMO, Clair Duff in memory of Catherine Shepard, Deb MacLeod and Ward Sellers, as well as John Terry and Lisa Rochon and the T.R. Meighen Family Foundation.