Canisia Lubrin and Anne Fleming among longlisted Canadian authors for $216K Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
Five Canadian writers have made the 15-book longlist
Writers Canisia Lubrin and Anne Fleming are among the five Canadian authors longlisted for the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.
The Carol Shields Prize awards $150,000 U.S. (approx. $215,944 Cdn) to a single work of fiction by a woman or non-binary writer. The prize is open to English-language books published in the U.S. or Canada, including translations from Spanish and French. Writers must be citizens or permanent residents of Canada or the U.S.
Lubrin is longlisted 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.
Fleming is recognized for Curiosities, which was on the 2024 Giller Prize shortlist.
Curiosities centres around an amateur historian who discovers an obscure memoir from 1600s England that explores a love that could not be explained in those times. Weaving together different fictional accounts, the novel tells the life stories of Joan and Thomasina, the only two survivors of a village ravaged by the plague, and how they eventually find each other again. Thomasina, now Tom, navigates the world in boy's clothes and as a male, but faces a struggle when discovered, naked, by a member of the clergy.
Fleming is an author based in Victoria. Her books include Pool-Hopping and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. She has also written a middle-grade novel, The Goat, which was a Junior Library Guild and White Ravens selection.
The other Canadian titles on the Carol Shields Prize longlist are Pale Shadows by Dominique Fortier, translated by Rhonda Mullins, Naniki by Oonya Kempadoo and Cicada Summer by Erica McKeen.
The complete longlist is as follows:
- The Hearing Test by Eliza Barry Callahan
- Kin: Practically True Stories by V Efua Prince
- Curiosities by Anne Fleming
- Pale Shadows by Dominique Fortier, translated by Rhonda Mullins
- All Fours by Miranda July
- Obligations to the Wounded by Mubanga Kalimamukwento
- Naniki by Oonya Kempadoo
- Creation Lake by Rachel Kushner
- Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin
- Liars by Sarah Manguso
- Cicada Summer by Erica McKeen
- Bear by Julia Phillips
- River East, River West by Aube Rey Lescure
- Masquerade by O.O. Sangoyomi
- Everything Flirts: Philosophical Romances by Sharon Wahl
"It has been a joy and an honour to select these outstanding books for the Carol Shields Prize longlist," said jury chair Diana Abu-Jaber in a press release.
"Each of these works is extraordinary and original, showing us the path forward, out of suppression, into humanity and liberation."
The jury is rounded out by Canadian authors Tessa McWatt, Kim Fu and Norma Dunning and American author Jeanne Thornton.
The shortlist will be announced on April 3 and the winner will be revealed on May 1. Each of the four finalists receives $12,500 U.S. (approx. $17,972 Cdn).
The Carol Shields Prize was founded by Susan Swan, Janice Zawerbny and Don Oravec.
Last year's winner was V. V. Ganeshananthan for Brotherless Night.
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.
