Charlene Carr and David Huebert among winners of 2025 Nova Scotia and Atlantic Book Awards
The awards, managed by the Atlantic Book Awards Society, recognize books from Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada
Charlene Carr and David Huebert are among the winners of the 2025 Nova Scotia and Atlantic Book Awards.
The awards, managed by the Atlantic Book Awards Society, recognize books from Nova Scotia and Atlantic Canada including poetry, illustrated children's books, adult fiction and nonfiction. The provincial and regional awards are collectively worth more than $55,000 and are selected by independent juries.
Carr's We Rip the World Apart won the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.
We Rip the World Apart tells the layered story of Kareela, a 24-year-old, biracial woman, who learns she's pregnant and is struggling to find herself; her mother, Evelyn, who fled to Canada from Jamaica in the 1980s; and her paternal grandmother, Violet, who moved into their house after Kareela's brother was killed by the police.
The novel weaves the past, present and future as secrets are shared and buried and choices are made that have lasting reverberations.
Carr is a Toronto-raised writer and author based in Nova Scotia. She is the author of several independently published novels and a novella. Her first novel with a major publisher is Hold My Girl. She was named a writer to watch in 2023 by CBC Books.
Huebert won the $30,000 Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award for his novel Oil People, which was also shortlisted for the 2025 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.
Oil People is a novel set in southwestern Ontario and weaves together two narratives and timelines to unravel family secrets and the toxic yet powerful nature of oil.
The novel tells the story of 13-year-old Jade Armbruster in 1987, who is living on the family's deteriorating oil farm, as her parents decide what to do about the land and their business.
Jade's teenage experiences are juxtaposed with the 1862 story of Clyde Armbruster, who built the oil farm, and the rivalry he develops with his neighbours.
Huebert is a Halifax-based writer who has won the CBC Short Story Prize and The Walrus Poetry Prize. He is the author of short story collections Peninsula Sinking, which won a Dartmouth Book Award and was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and Chemical Valley, which won the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize.
The complete list of winners for the 2025 Nova Scotia Book Awards are:
- Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction: We Rip the World Apart by Charlene Carr
- Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award: Finding Otipemisiwak by Andrea Currie
- George Borden Writing for Change: Got Blood To Give: Anti-Black Homophobia in Blood Donation by OmiSoore H. Dryden
- Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Fiction: The Nowhere Places by Susan LeBlanc
- Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Non-Fiction: Hell of a Ride by Martin Bauman
The 2025 Atlantic Book Award winners are as follows:
- Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children's Literature: Standing on Neptune by Valerie Sherrard
- APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award: Mal by Chase Cormier
- J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award: Island by Douglas Walbourne-Gough
- Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award: Oil People by David Huebert
- Reader's Choice Award: We're Not Rich by Sue Murtagh
Many of the winning 2025 titles are available in accessible formats via the Centre for Equitable Library Access website.
Previous winners include authors Michael Crummey, Tyler LeBlanc, Alison Taylor, Ami McKay, Marina Endicott and Lucas Crawford.
