Natalie Sue wins for $25K Leacock Medal for Canadian humour writing
Her novel, I Hope This Finds You Well, is about office job shenangians
Calgary writer Natalie Sue has won the 2025 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for her novel I Hope This Finds You Well.
The $25,000 prize is one of the oldest of its kind, established in 1947 to support the growth of Canadian humour writing.
I Hope This Finds You Well follows Jolene, an anxious admin for Supershops, Inc., as she navigates a workplace of unsatisfactory colleagues.
Jolene copes with the frustrations of her office job through passive aggressive messages in emails that are never meant to be seen.
When she is caught and reprimanded, an IT mishap results in her having access to the confidential messages of her superiors. Can Jolene use this to the advantage of her career?
Sue is a Calgary-based writer of Iranian and British descent. I Hope This Finds You Well is her debut novel and was also nominated for the 2025 Amazon First Novel Award.
The shortlisted authors, Greg Kearney, for An Evening With Birdy O'Day, and Patricia J. Parsons, for We Came From Away, each receive $5,000. The winners were selected from a Canada-wide panel of judges.
The prize is named in honour of Ontario writer Stephen Leacock, a humorist and popular author in the first half of the 20th century. His books include Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, published in 1912, and Literary Lapses, published in 1910.
The prize has been funded by the Dunkley Charitable Foundation since the fall of 2020. The organization is based in Orillia, Ont., the town that inspired the fictional community of Mariposa in Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Leacock had a summer estate there.
Last year's winner was Patrick deWitt for The Librarianist.
Other past winners include Wayne Johnston, Heidi L.M Jacobs, Robertson Davies, Pierre Berton, Farley Mowat, Paul Quarrington, Mordecai Richler, Stuart McLean, Terry Fallis, Susan Juby and Cassie Stocks.
