Catherine Leroux and Catherine Hernandez among 7 Canadians longlisted for $148K Dublin Literary Award
Sarah Bernstein and Michel Jean are also up for one of the most valuable prizes for fiction in English
Seven books written by Canadians are among the 71 longlisted for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award, including and The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou, and Behind You by Catherine Hernandez
The €100,000 (approx. $147,962 Cdn) prize annually recognizes the best work of fiction in English from anywhere in the world. This year, the prize celebrates its 30th year in operation.
The Future, which won Canada Reads 2024, was championed by author, poet and essayist Heather O'Neill.
The Future is set in an alternate history of Detroit where the French never surrendered the city to the U.S. Its residents deal with poverty, pollution and a legacy of racism. When Gloria, a woman looking for answers about her missing granddaughters, arrives in the city, she finds a kingdom of orphaned and abandoned children who have created their own society.
The Future is the translation of Leroux's French-language novel L'Avenir. It also won the Jacques-Brossard Award for speculative fiction.
Leroux is a writer, translator and journalist from Montreal. She was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize for The Party Wall, which is an English translation of her French-language short story collection Le mur mitoyen.
Leroux won the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for English to French translation for her translation of Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien.
Ouriou is a French and Spanish to English translator, a fiction writer and a playwright. She has previously won the Governor General's Literary Award for translation for her work. She lives in Calgary.
Behind You follows the story of Alma, a film editor for a corny true crime series. At a glance, her life with her wife and teenage son seems comfortable and safe. But when Infamous' latest episode features the Scarborough Stalker — who terrorized Alma's own neighborhood when she was a girl — Alma is consumed by her long-suppressed past. In the present day, she must reckon with her understanding of consent to stop her young son from making terrible choices toward his own girlfriend.
Unfolding in two timelines, Behind You challenges and dissects rape culture and champions one girl's resilience into adulthood.
Hernandez is a Canadian writer, author and playwright. She is the author of several books, including the novels Scarborough and Crosshairs and the children's books I Promise, M is for Mustache and Where Do Your Feelings Live?. She is also the creator and star of the Audible Original sketch comedy podcast Imminent Disaster.
Scarborough was championed by actor Malia Baker on Canada Reads 2022. It was also adapted into a feature film that premiered at TIFF in 2021. CBC Books named her a writer to watch in 2017.
Michel Jean, Dominique Fortier, Sarah Bernstein, Michael Crummey and Colin Barrett are the other Canadians on the longlist.
Jean is longlisted for Kukum, also translated by Ouriou, that traces the journey of Almanda Siméon, an orphan living in the Innu Nation of the Pekuakamiulnuatsh. Written with intimacy, the coming-of-age story is about love and acceptance, the history of colonial violence, and the traditional values of the Innu community.
Jean is an author and journalist who grew up in Mashteuiatsh, Que., home to the Pekuakamiulnuatsh First Nation. His writing is often inspired by his experience as a reporter. Jean's previous books include Envoyé spécial, Un monde mort comme la lune and Tsunamis.
Bernstein is on the list for Study for Obedience., which won the 2023 Giller Prize.
Study for Obedience explores themes of guilt, abuse and prejudice through the eyes of its unreliable narrator. In it, a woman leaves her hometown to move to a "remote northern country" to be a housekeeper for her brother, whose wife recently decided to leave him.
Soon after her arrival the community is struck by unusual events, from collective bovine hysteria to a potato blight. When the locals direct their growing suspicions of newcomers at her, their hostility grows more palpable.
Bernstein is a Montreal-born author and creative writing teacher. Her other books include her 2021 novel The Coming Bad Days and her collection of prose poems Now Comes the Lightning. Bernstein was named one of Granta's best young British novelists in 2023. She currently lives in Scotland.
Fortier made the longlist for Pale Shadows, translated by Rhonda Mullins. Pale Shadows tells the story of how Emily Dickinson's poems were published after her death, weaving together the stories of Dickinson's sister, Lavinia, her brother's mistress, Mabel Loomis Todd, and his wife, Susan Gilbert Dickinson.
Fortier is an editor and translator from Outremont, Quebec. Her other books translated into English include On the Proper Use of Stars, Wonder, The Island of Books and Paper Houses. Fortier's first novel, Du bon usage des étoiles was nominated for a Governor General's Award and the Prix des Libraires du Quebec.
Her novel Au peril de la mer won the Governor General's Award for French fiction.
Mullins is an award-winning translator based in Montreal. Her previous works include And Miles To Go Before I Sleep, The Laws of the Skies and Suzanne. A seven-time finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for Translation, Mullins won in 2015 for her translation of Jocelyne Saucier's Twenty-One Cardinals.
Her translation And the Birds Rained Down by Saucier was a Canada Reads selection for 2015.
Crummey's The Adversary also made the longlist. The Adversary features two rivals who represent the largest fishing operations on Newfoundland's northern outpost. When a wedding that would have secured Abe Strapp's hold on the shore falls apart, it sets off a series of events that lead to year after year of violence and vendettas and a seemingly endless feud.
Crummey is a poet and novelist from Newfoundland. He is also the author of the novels The Innocents, Sweetland and Galore and the poetry collections Arguments with Gravity and Passengers. Two of Crummey's novels have been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction — Sweetland in 2014 and Galore in 2009.
The Innocents was shortlisted for the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the 2019 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.
Barrett's Wild Houses also made the longlist. Wild Houses is a novel set in Ballina in the west of Ireland. It tells the story of the lead-up to the town's biggest weekend of the year, and how two outsiders find themselves as their worlds become chaotic and violent.
Barrett is an Irish Canadian writer known for his short story collections Homesickness and Young Skins.
The Dublin prize's longlist is compiled by library nominations from around the world. Nominations by 83 libraries from 34 countries are on this year's longlist.
A jury selects the shortlist and winner from these submissions.
The 2025 jury is comprised of writer Fiona Sze-Lorrain, writer Gerbrand Bakker, scholar Leonard Cassuto, author Martina Devlin and poet Nidhi Zak/Aria Eipe.
The jury is chaired by Chris Morash, a professor at Trinity College Dublin, who does not vote.
The shortlist will be announced on March 25 and the winner will be revealed on May 22.
Last year's winner was Solenoid by Romanian author Mircea Cărtărescu and translator Sean Cotter.
Two Canadians have won the prize since its 1996 inception: Alistair MacLeod won in 2001 for No Great Mischief and Rawi Hage won in 2008 for De Niro's Game.
For the full list of 2025 nominees, check out the awards website.
