These 14 writers recently won some of Canada's biggest literary awards
CBC Books is taking a look back at some of the award-winning Canadian writing of the past year. From Canada Reads to the Governor General's Literary Awards, these are the authors that won some of Canada's biggest literary prizes.
You can listen to the CBC Books Labour Day Special hosted by Ali Hassan below — or keep scrolling to see which Canadian books made the list!
The Future by Catherine Leroux, translated by Susan Ouriou
The Future was championed by Heather O'Neill and won Canada Reads 2024. The Future was also longlisted for the 2024 Carol Shields Prize. Previously, The Future won the Jacques-Brossard Award for speculative fiction.
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.
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.
Old Bones by Kate Gunn
Old Bones by Kate Gunn won the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize. Old Bones aims to understand the experiences of the women who have faced medical trauma.
Gunn grew up on Galiano Island off the west coast of British Columbia. She currently lives and works in Vancouver. Her short fiction has appeared in Prism International and the Antigonish Review. She was previously longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize in 2019 for Red Sails, a story about her grandmother's journey from Scotland to Canada in the 1950s.
Glossary for an Aswang by Louie Leyson
Glossary for an Aswang by Louie Leyson won the 2023 CBC Nonfiction Prize. Glossary for an Aswang was inspired by research conducted around Filipino overseas workers.
Leyson's work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and National Magazine Awards. Their writing has appeared in Catapult, The Malahat Review, Palette Poetry, The Rupture, Nat. Brut and Plenitude.
lotus flower blooming into breasts by Kyo Lee
lotus flower blooming into breasts by Kyo Lee won the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize. lotus flower blooming into breasts is inspired by Lee's personal Korean-Canadian experience.
Lee is a queer, Korean-Canadian high-school student, writer, and dreamer. Her literature has been recognized or published by the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award, PRISM International, University of Toronto, Ringling College, New York Times, and more. Her debut poetry collection will be published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2025.
Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese
Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and the 2023 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for 2SLGBTQ+ emerging writers.
Chrysalis is a short story collection that examines the ways in which racialized women are undermined and exploited and the ways in which they reclaim their power. Blending realism with elements of fantasy, Varghese tells stories of a woman dying in her sleep repeatedly until she finds an unexpected refuge or a couple in a broken marriage encountering spiritual direction. Each story looks at family, sexuality, cultural norms and the ties that bind.
Varghese is a Hamilton, Ont.-based writer and editor. Her stories have been recognized in the Prism International Short Fiction Contest and the Alice Munro Festival Short Story Competition and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Chrysalis is her first book.
Unearthing by Kyo Maclear
Unearthing won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction.
After Kyo Maclear's father dies, a DNA test shows that she is not biologically related to the father that raised her. In Unearthing Maclear embarks on a journey to unravel the family mystery and uncover the story of her biological father, raising questions about kinship and what it means to be family.
Maclear is an essayist, novelist and children's author. Her books have been translated into 15 languages, won a Governor General's Literary Award and been nominated for the TD Canadian Children's Literature Award, among others. Her memoir Birds Art Life was a finalist for the 2017 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction and won the 2018 Trillium Book Award.
Xanax Cowboy by Hannah Green
Xanax Cowboy won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry and the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award.
Xanax Cowboy is a poetry collection that follows the adventures of the Xanax Cowboy, a pill-popping, whiskey drinking woman with a reputation like a rattlesnake.
Hannah Green is a Winnipeg-based writer and poetry editor. She was a poetry finalist for the 2021 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Green was also a reader for the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize.
William Shakespeareʼs As You Like It: A Radical Retelling by Cliff Cardinal
William Shakespeareʼs As You Like It: A Radical Retelling won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for drama.
William Shakespeareʼs As You Like It: A Radical Retelling is a subversive update to Shakespeare's classic with an Indigenous perspective. It balances bawdy humour and raw emotions to challenge Canada's relationship with Indigenous people.
Cardinal is a playwright and actor born on the Pine Ridge Reservation. His work has been recognized with the Buddies in Bad Times Vanguard Award for Risk and Innovation, the RBC Tarragon Emerging Playwright Award and the REVEAL Indigenous Arts Award. Cardinal has also written a play called Huff & Stitch.
The Probability of Everything by Sarah Everett
The Probability of Everything won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — text.
The Probability of Everything follows 11-year-old Kemi Carter, an avid fan of probability. When she sees an asteroid hovering over the sky, her perspective on everything changes. The asteroid has an 84.7 per cent chance of colliding with Earth in four days. Is she the only one who feels like the world is ending?
Everett is an author of several books for teens, currently based in Alberta. Her YA and middle grade books include Some Other Now, How to Live Without You and No One Here is Lonely. Everett was named a 2024 writer to watch by CBC Books.
When You Can Swim by Jack Wong
When You Can Swim won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — illustrated books.
When You Can Swim is a picture book that encourages children to overcome their fears of the water. In the book, an adult explains to a young girl the joys and surprises of swimming.
When You Can Swim is for ages 4 to 8.
Wong is a Halifax-based author and illustrator who was born in Hong Kong but grew up in Vancouver. When You Can Swim is his first book.
And Then She Fell by Alicia Elliott
And Then She Fell won the 2024 Amazon First Novel Award.
And Then She Fell is a horror novel which follows a young woman named Alice struggling to navigate the early days of motherhood and live up to the unrealistic expectations of those around her.
Elliott is based in Brantford, Ont. Her writing has been published most recently in Room, Grain and The New Quarterly. She is also the author of the nonfiction book A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, a columnist for CBC Arts and CBC Books named her a writer to watch in 2019. She was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award.
In The Upper Country by Kai Thomas
In The Upper Country won the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction prize.
In In The Upper Country, young Lensinda Martin is summoned to interview an old woman who has killed a slave hunter. The woman, who recently arrived in Dunmore, Alta. via the Underground Railroad, refuses to confess but instead proposes a deal: a story for a story. Through these stories, the interwoven nature of Indigenous and Black histories in North America become apparent and Lensinda's destiny could be changed forever.
Thomas is a writer, carpenter and land steward. Born and raised in Ottawa, he is of Black and mixed heritage descended from Trinidad and the British Isles. He currently lives in New York state. CBC Books named Thomas a writer to watch in 2023.
Ordinary Notes by Christina Sharpe
Ordinary Notes won the 2023 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Ordinary Notes explores the complexities of Black life and loss through a series of 248 notes which intertwine past and present realities. Through her literary form, Sharpe writes of the influence of her mother and combines multiple voices on the many ways to experience Blackness.
Sharpe is a Toronto-based writer, professor and Canada Research Chair in Black Studies in the Humanities at York University. Her previous book, In the Wake: On Blackness and Being, was named one of the best books of 2016 by the Guardian and was a nonfiction finalist for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. Sharpe was also awarded the 2024 Windham-Campbell Prize for nonfiction.
Sharpe is one of the jurors for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize alongside Michelle Good and Dan Werb.
Study for Obedience by Sarah Bernstein
Study for Obedience won the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize and was on the shortlist for the Booker 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 currently living in Scotland. Her other books include her 2021 novel The Coming Bad Days, which will be reprinted by Knopf and available Oct. 1, 2024, and her collection of prose poems Now Comes the Lightning. Bernstein was named one of Granta's best young British novelists in 2023.
