Ontario writer Canisia Lubrin wins $208K Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
Canadian writer Canisia Lubrin has won the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.
The $150,000 U.S. ($207,582.64 Cdn) prize recognizes the best fiction book by a woman or non-binary writer from the U.S. and Canada. It is presently the largest international literary prize for women writers. The winner will also receive a five-night residency at the Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland.
Lubrin is honoured for her book Code Noir, which was also shortlisted for the 2024 Atwood Gibson Fiction prize.
The Code Noir, or the Black Code, was a set of 59 articles decreed by Louis XVI in 1685 which regulated ownership of slaves in all French colonies. In Code Noir, Lubrin reflects on these codes to examine the legacy of enslavement and colonization — and the inherent power of Black resistance.
Lubrin is a Canadian writer, editor and academic who was born in St. Lucia and currently based in Whitby, Ont. Her debut poetry collection Voodoo Hypothesis was longlisted for the Gerald Lampert Award, the Pat Lowther Award and was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award.
Her poetry collection The Dyzgraphxst won the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. It also won the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2020 Governor General's Literary Prize for poetry.
The 2025 jury was chaired by American writer Diana Abu-Jaber. The other jury members are Canadian authors Tessa McWatt, Kim Fu and Norma Dunning and American author Jeanne Thornton.
"Code Noir contains multitudes. Its characters inhabit multi-layered landscapes of the past, present and future, confronting suffering, communion, and metamorphosis. Canisia Lubrin's prose is polyphonic; the stories invite you to immerse yourself in both the real and the speculative, in the intimate and in sweeping moments of history," said the jury.
"Riffing on the Napoleonic decree, Lubrin retunes the legacies of slavery, colonialism, and violence. This is a virtuoso collection that breaks new ground in short fiction."
The four remaining finalists included Pale Shadows by Canadian novelist Dominique Fortier, translated by Rhonda Mullins, along with American titles All Fours by Miranda July, Liars by Sarah Manguso and River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure. They received $12,500 U.S. ($17,301.28 Cdn).
The four finalists and the winner will be invited to participate in a group retreat residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Last year's winner was V. V. Ganeshananthan for Brotherless Night.
The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction was created to recognize novels, short story collections, and graphic novels written by women and non-binary authors and published in the U.S. and Canada.
Planning for the prize began back in 2012 after Canadian author Susan Swan participated in a discussion of the status of women in writing on a panel that included Kate Mosse, who established the U.K. Women's Prize for Fiction and Australian writer Gail Jones. It was moderated by Shields's daughter Anne Giardini.
Looking at statistics generated by arts organizations like VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and Canadian Women in Literary Arts (CWILA), Swan found that women writers were being reviewed in publications far less than their male counterparts.
The historical numbers for major literary awards are particularly dismal — only 17 women have won the Nobel Prize in Literature since 1909 and about a third of the winners of Canada's oldest literary prize, the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, have been women.
Shields, the prize's namesake, was one of Canada's best-known writers.
Her books include the novels The Stone Diaries, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction in 1992 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993, Larry's Party and Unless. She died in 2003.
