Stuart Ross has won the Trillium Book Award for his genre-defying work The Book of Grief and Hamburgers while Sanna Wani has won the Trillium Book Award for Poetry for My Grief, the Sun.

Established in 1987, the prize annually recognizes the best book and best poetry collection from writers in Ontario.

The winners in both the English and French categories of the Trillium Book Award will receive $20,000, while the winner of the poetry category will receive $10,000. This year, the category for best book of children's literature in French will also be awarded.

The Book of Grief and Hamburgers is a book that brings together memoir, essays and poetic meditation. It was written after the sudden death of Ross's brother, leaving him as the last living member of his family. The Book of Grief and Hamburgers reflects on what it means to grieve the people one loves and how to go on living in the face of an enormous accumulation of loss.

Ross is a writer, editor and teacher. He is the author of several books of poetry, fiction and essays including You Exist, Pockets and A Sparrow Came Down Resplendent. Ross was the 2019 recipient of the prestigious Harbourfront Festival Prize. He lives in Cobourg, Ont.

My Grief, the Sun is a collection of magical poems filled with love and grief. They touch on everything from filmmaker Hayao Miyazaki's Princess Mononoke to German Orientalist scholarship on early Islam. Moving from the Missinnihe River in Canada to the Zabarwan Mountains in Kashmir, Sanna Wani explores the world from a poet's perspective.

Wani is a poet who lives in Mississauga, Ont., and Srinagar, Kashmir. Her work has appeared in Brick, Poem-a-Day and Best Canadian Poetry 2020. My Grief, the Sun is her first collection of poetry.

The French-language winners were Gilles Lacombe for Circé des hirondelles and Michèle Laframboise for Le secret de Paloma.

Last year's winners included Ann Shin for her debut novel The Last Exiles and Bardia Sinaee for his poetry collection Intruder.

Previous Trillium Award winners include Margaret Atwood, Dionne Brand and Alice Munro.