Carley Fortune and Christina Cooke shortlisted for $20K Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
Debut books by Canadian authors Scott Alexander Howard and Morgan Campbell also nominated
Carley Fortune's Every Summer After and Christina Cooke's Broughtupsy are among the debut works shortlisted for the 2025 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize.
The annual $20,000 prize recognizes the best debut books by Canadian writers. A shortlist of six books are chosen in three categories, nonfiction, literary fiction and one of three types of genre fiction: romance, speculative fiction or mystery. This year, the genre category is romance.
Fortune is nominated in the romance category for Every Summer After, a coming-of-age novel involving friendship, romance and forgiveness told over the course of six years and one weekend. Childhood summer friends Percy and Sam were inseparable — until a fateful moment forced them apart.
Years later, a funeral draws them together once more to navigate love, loss and broken hearts.
Fortune is a Toronto-based writer and journalist who has worked as an editor for Refinery29, The Globe and Mail, Chatelaine and Toronto Life. While Every Summer After is her debut novel, she has since written This Summer Will Be Different and Meet Me at the Lake, which was a contender for Canada Reads 2024, championed by Mirian Njoh.
Cooke is nominated in the fiction category for Broughtupsy, a novel about that brings Akúa home to Jamaica after a decade. There, she struggles to reconnect with her estranged sister while they spread her late brother's ashes and revisit landmarks of their shared childhood.
A chance meeting with a stripper named Jayda forces Akúa to reckon with her queerness, her homeland, her family and herself over two life-changing weeks.
Cooke is a Jamaican Canadian writer from Vancouver and currently based in New York City. Her work has appeared in publications such as The Caribbean Writer, Prairie Schooner and Epiphany: A Literary Journal. She has won the Writers' Trust M&S Journey Prize and Glenna Luschei Prairie Schooner Award.
Vancouver writer Scott Alexander Howard is also nominated for the fiction category, for The Other Valley, which was longlisted for Canada Reads 2025.
In the nonfiction category, Ontario-based journalist and senior contributor at CBC Sports Morgan Campbell is recognized for his memoir My Fighting Family.
The three winners of the 2025 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prizes will be announced on June 17, 2025.
There is one judge picking a winner from each category: journalist and writer Sarah Weinman will be the nonfiction judge, novelist Suzette Mayr will be the literary fiction judge and rom-com writer Chantel Guertin will judge the romance prize.
Here are all the 2025 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer finalists:
Nonfiction:
- The Nature of Our Cities by Nadina Galle
- Dear Da-Lê by Anh Duong
- The Monster and the Mirror by K.J. Aiello
- My Fighting Family by Morgan Campbell
- Medicine Wheel for the Planet by Dr. Jennifer Grenz
- The Traitor's Daughter by Roxana Spicer
Literary fiction:
- Broughtupsy by Christina Cooke
- Grey Dog by Elliott Gish
- The Other Valley by Scott Alexander Howard
- Dotted Lines by Stephanie Cesca
- Celestina's House by Clarissa Trinidad Gonzalez
- Coup de Grâce by Sofia Ajram
Romance:
- At Last Count by Claire Ross Dunn
- A Five-Letter Word for Love by Amy James
- The Circus Train by Amita Parikh
- Never Been Better by Leanne Toshiko Simpson
- Every Summer After by Carley Fortune
- A Sweet Sting of Salt by Rose Sutherland
Last year's winners were Jérémie Harris in the nonfiction category for Quantum Physics Made Me Do It, Jamaluddin Aram in the fiction category for the novel Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday and Keziah Weir in the mystery category for The Mythmakers.
Corrections
- This post has been updated to reflect the correct prize amount.Apr 22, 2025 1:07 PM EDT
