American writer Leslie Jamison wins 2025 $75K Weston International Award
The prize recognizes the career achievement of an international author for nonfiction work
American writer and essayist Leslie Jamison has won the 2025 Weston International Award.
The $75,000 prize is a companion to the existing Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction, which is awarded annually to a Canadian author for a single work of nonfiction.
The Weston International Award recognizes the career achievement of an international author for a body of nonfiction work. Eligible international authors must have published at least three books of outstanding literary merit, in the genre of nonfiction, that are written in English or else widely available in translation.
Jamison is an author known for blending personal narrative, cultural criticism and literary reportage. Her nonfiction includes essay collections The Empathy Exams and Make It Scream, Make It Burn, and the memoirs The Recovering and Splinters.
Her work appears in The New Yorker, the New York Times, Virginia Quarterly Review and the New York Review of Books.
Jamison has been nominated for the PEN/Diamonstein-Spielvogel Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the National Magazine Award. She teaches at Columbia University and lives in Brooklyn.
Jamison also completed her friend Rebecca Godfrey's novel, Peggy, after Godfrey died of cancer.
Jamison was selected by an international advisory committee and a Canadian jury. The advisory committee is comprised of U.K. broadcaster and columnist Mariella Frostrup, Japanese American writer Pico Iyer and American author and editor Sam Tanenhaus.
The Canadian jurors were Carmen Aguirre, a theatre artist and author, Jeet Heer, a writer and columnist, Marni Jackson, a journalist and writer, Benjamin Perrin, a professor and author and writer Michelle Porter.
"Through evocative, compelling and immersive storytelling, leavened by self-deprecating humour and tenderness, the author transports us into her world — with all its longings and awakenings," said the jury in a press statement.
"She has the rare gift of being able to fuse her most intimate thoughts with insights gleaned from rigorous scholarship in the social sciences and history. If nonfiction at its best pursues both truth and beauty, this author demonstrates the art of writing out of our lives at the highest level.
"Jamison expands our experience of what can be shared on the page, and consoles us with her powerfully articulated honesty."
Jamison expands our experience of what can be shared on the page, and consoles us with her powerfully articulated honesty.- Weston International Award jury
Jamison will give a talk at the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto on Sept. 15 to discuss his career and work. Tickets are available on the Weston International Award website.
Last year's winner was South Asian writer Pankaj Mishra.
The Writers' Trust of Canada is a charitable organization that seeks to advance, nurture and celebrate Canadian writers and writing. Its programming includes 11 national literary awards, financial grants, career development initiatives for emerging writers and a writers' retreat.
It was founded in 1976 by Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Graeme Gibson, Margaret Laurence and David Young.
