Meet 14 Canadian writers who won Canada's biggest literary awards this year
We're taking a look back at some of the award-winning Canadian writing of the past year.
From Canada Reads, to the Scotiabank Giller Prize — and everything in between — these are the authors that won some of Canada's biggest literary prizes.
Ducks by Kate Beaton
Ducks is an autobiographical graphic novel that recounts author Kate Beaton's time spent working in the Alberta oil sands. With the goal of paying off her student loans, Kate leaves her tight-knit seaside Nova Scotia community and heads west, where she encounters harsh realities, including the everyday trauma that no one discusses.
Ducks won Canada Reads 2023, when it was championed by Jeopardy! star Mattea Roach. It also won Eisner awards for best writer/artist and best graphic memoir in 2023.
Kate Beaton is a cartoonist from Nova Scotia who launched her career by publishing the comic strip Hark! A Vagrant online. The sassy historical webcomic gained a following of 500,000 monthly visitors and was eventually turned into a bestselling book. Beaton's success continued with the book Step Aside, Pops, which won the 2016 Eisner Award for best humour publication. Beaton has also published two children's books, King Baby and The Princess and the Pony.
Just a Howl by Will Richter
Just a Howl by Will Richter was the winner of the 2023 CBC Short Story Prize. He previously made the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Proverbs of the Lesser and was also longlisted in 2019 for his story At a Distance.
Will Richter is a writer living in Vancouver. His stories have appeared or are forthcoming in various literary magazines in Canada and the U.S., including Arts & Letters, The Fiddlehead, Fiction International, subTerrain, The Threepenny Review and Witness. He has also written and collaborated on several comic shorts for Düsseldorf, Germany-based Rogue Wave Comics.
Advice to a New Beekeeper by Susan Cormier
Advice to a New Beekeeper by Susan Cormier was the winner of the 2022 CBC Nonfiction Prize. She wrote Advice to a New Beekeeper because she wanted people interested in beekeeping to be aware that honeybees require knowledgeable, dedicated and hands-on care.
Susan Cormier is a Métis writer who works in print, performance and film. By day, she is a beekeeper and co-owner of C.R. Apiary in Langley, B.C. By night, she is the producer of Vancouver Story Slam.
Spell World Backwards by Bren Simmers
Spell World Backwards by Bren Simmers was the winner of the 2022 CBC Poetry Prize. The collection of poems is inspired by her mother's experience with Alzheimer's.
Simmers is the author of four books, including the wilderness memoir Pivot Point and Hastings-Sunrise, which was a finalist for the Vancouver Book Award. Her most recent collection of poetry is If, When. She was previously longlisted for the CBC Poetry Prize in 2013 for I Blame MASH For My Addiction To MLS and in 2012 for Science Lessons.
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti
Pure Colour by Sheila Heti was the winner of the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.
Pure Colour follows a woman named Mira, who leaves home for school and meets a person named Annie. Annie has this power over Mira and opens her chest like a portal. Many years later when Mira is older, her father dies and his spirit passes into her. Together, they become a leaf on a tree. But when photosynthesis gets boring, Mira must choose whether or not to return to Annie and the human world she has left behind. Pure Colour is a funny exploration of the wonderful and terrible aspects of being alive.
Sheila Heti is a Canadian playwright and author whose work has been translated in over a dozen languages. Her novel Motherhood was on the shortlist for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. She is also the author of the novels Ticknor and How Should a Person Be? and the self-help book The Chairs Are Where the People Go.
Aki-Wayn-Zih by Eli Baxter
Residential school survivor Eli Baxter is among the last fluent speakers of Anishinaabaymowin, an Anishinaabay language. In Aki-Wayn-Zih, Baxter looks at the history of the Anishinaabayg and their relationship with the land since the beginning of their life on Turtle Island. He brings together thousands of years of history with his personal story, growing up on the land, trapping and fishing, and his experience being forced to attend residential school. Aki-Wayn-Zih is about the importance of spirituality, language, history and of sharing stories.
Aki-Wayn-Zih won the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for nonfiction.
Baxter is a residential school survivor and certified Ontario teacher. Aki-wayn-zih is his first book.
Shadow Blight by Annick MacAskill
Drawing on ancient mythology, Shadow Blight explores the grief and loneliness of pregnancy loss. Interweaving contemporary experience with mythological stories, Annick MacAskill gives new language to often unspeakable pain.
Shadow Blight won the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for poetry.
MacAskill lives in Halifax, where she teaches French language and literature at Saint Mary's University. Her poetry collections include Murmurations and No Meeting Without Body, which was nominated for the Gerald Lampert Memorial Award and shortlisted for the J.M. Abraham Award. MacAskill was the Arc Poetry Magazine's poet-in-residence for 2021–22.
The Sour Cherry Tree by Naseem Hrab, illustrated by Nahid Kazemi
The Sour Cherry Tree is a look at the loss of a loved one through the eyes of a child. Based on author Naseem Hrab's own memories, this picture book looks at grief, love and culture to explore death and dying.
The Sour Cherry Tree was the winner of the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — illustrated books.
Hrab is a Toronto-based writer and storyteller. She is also the author of Ira Crumb Makes a Pretty Good Friend and Ira Crumb Feels the Feelings. Her picture book Weekend Dad was a finalist for the 2020 Governor General's Literary Prize for young people's literature — illustrated books.
Nahid Kazemi is an artist, illustrator, graphic designer and author from Montreal. Her other books include I'm Glad That You're Happy, The Orange House and Over the Rooftops, Under the Moon by JonArno Lawson.
The Summer of Bitter and Sweet by Jen Ferguson
The Summer of Bitter and Sweet is a YA novel about a young Métis girl living on the Canadian prairies. Lou is spending the summer working at her family's failing frozen treats business with her newly ex-boyfriend. When an old friend unexpectedly comes back to town after three years away — and her biological father sends her a letter wanting to reconnect — Lou is suddenly faced with more challenges than she might be able to handle.
Jen Ferguson is a Los Angeles-based author, activist and academic of Michif/Métis and Canadian settler heritage based in Los Angeles. Ferguson has a PhD in English and creative writing. Her work includes the 2016 novel Border Markers and her essay Off Balance was featured in Best Canadian Essays 2020. The Summer of Bitter and Sweet is her debut YA novel.
LISTEN | Jen Ferguson on healing:
The Piano Teacher: A Healing Key by Dorothy Dittrich
The Piano Teacher: A Healing Key is a play about a classic pianist named Erin who, after an unexpected and tremendous loss, struggles to make music. When she encounters a new piano teacher, she learns to reconnect with her creativity, deal with her grief and give herself compassion and love.
The Piano Teacher: A Healing Key won the Governor General's Literary Award for Drama.
Dorothy Dittrich is a playwright, sound designer and composer who currently lives in Vancouver. Her other plays include The Dissociates, Lesser Demons, Two Part Invention and If the Moon Fall. She also created the musical When We Were Singing.
LISTEN | Dorothy Dittrich on healing:
Some Hellish by Nicholas Herring
Nicholas Herring's novel Some Hellish is about a lobster fisher named Herring who is facing the existential dread of what he feels is a boring, mundane life. That is, until one December day when he decides to cut a hole in the living room floor and alter the course of his life as he knows it. Through a myriad of absurd and confronting experiences, including his wife and children leaving him, Tibetan monks rescuing him after a near-death experience, Herring is forced to reckon with himself, his fear and what it means to be alive.
Some Hellish won the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers's Trust Fiction Prize. The $60,000 award recognizes the best novel or short story collection published in Canada.
Nicholas Herring is a writer and carpenter from Murray Harbour, P.E.I. Some Hellish is his debut novel.
LISTEN | Nicholas Herring discusses Some Hellish:
The Invisible Siege by Dan Werb
The Invisible Siege: The Rise of Coronaviruses and the Search for a Cure by epidemiologist and journalist Dan Werb traces the surprisingly long history of the virus family and the scientists who went to war with it, as well as the lessons learned and lost during the SARS and MERS outbreaks. Werb argues there is no doubt coronaviruses will strike again, and that understanding them is the best way to be prepared.
The Invisible Siege won the 2022 Hilary Weston Writers' Trust Prize for Nonfiction. The $60,000 award recognizes the best nonfiction book published in Canada.
Dan Werb is an epidemiologist, policy analyst and writer currently based in Toronto. He is also the author of the nonfiction work City of Omens.
LISTEN | Dan Werb discusses The Invisible Siege:
The Island of Forgetting by Jasmine Sealy
Vancouver author Jasmine Sealy's debut novel The Island of Forgetting won the 2023 Amazon First Novel Award.
Set in Barbados, The Island of Forgetting is a coming-of-age story spanning four generations, each from the perspective of a different family member who must navigate desire, duty, identity and family secrets while running a beachfront hotel. Raw and reflective, Sealy's novel is about the ghosts of what goes unsaid and the stories we tell ourselves to fill the absence.
The former prose editor of PRISM International, Sealy's short fiction has been shortlisted for several awards and longlisted for the CBC Short Story prize. She has also been published in various publications, including The New Quarterly, Room Magazine, Prairie Fire and Best Canadian Stories 2021.
LISTEN | Jasmine Sealy discusses The Island of Forgetting:
The Sleeping Car Porter by Suzette Mayr
The Sleeping Car Porter tells the story of Baxter, a Black man in 1929 who works as a sleeping car porter on a train that travels across the country. He smiles and tries to be invisible to the passengers, but what he wants is to save up and go to dentistry school. On one particular trip out west, the train is stalled and Baxter finds a naughty postcard of two gay men. The postcard reawakens his memories and longings and puts his job in jeopardy.
The Sleeping Car Porter won the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Suzette Mayr is a poet and novelist based in Calgary. She is the author of the novels Dr. Edith Vane and the Hares of Crawley Hall, Monoceros, Moon Honey, The Widows and Venous Hum. Monoceros won the ReLit Award, the City of Calgary W. O. Mitchell Book Prize and made the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist.
LISTEN | Suzette Mayr discusses The Sleeping Car Porter:
