Canada Reads books Bad Cree and Denison Avenue shortlisted for $10K Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize
CBC Books | Posted: April 18, 2024 4:10 PM | Last Updated: April 18
Debut books by Nita Prose, Kai Thomas, Anuja Varghese, Brent Butt, Hannah Wunsch also nominated
Canada Reads 2024 books Bad Cree by Jessica Johns and Denison Avenue by Christina Wong & Daniel Innes are among the debut works shortlisted for the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize.
The annual $10,000 prize recognizes the year's best debut books by Canadian writers. This year, 18 books were shortlisted and winners from three categories will be selected: nonfiction, literary fiction and mystery.
Johns is nominated in the fiction category for Bad Cree, a debut horror novel that made it to Day Three of this year's Canada Reads competition, championed by athlete and CBC Sports broadcaster Dallas Soonias. Bad Cree centres around a young woman named Mackenzie, who is haunted by terrifying nightmares and wracked with guilt about her sister Sabrina's untimely death.
Johns is a queer nehiyaw aunty with English-Irish ancestry and a member of Sucker Creek First Nation. Johns won the 2020 Writers' Trust Journey Prize for the short story Bad Cree, which evolved into the novel of the same name. Bad Cree also won the MacEwan Book of the Year prize. Johns is currently based in Edmonton.
LISTEN | Dallas Soonias and Jessica Johns discuss Bad Cree:
Wong and Innes are also nominated in the fiction category for the illustrated book Denison Avenue. Set in Toronto's Chinatown and Kensington Market, Denison Avenue is a moving portrait of a city undergoing mass gentrification and a Chinese Canadian elder experiencing the existential challenges of getting old and being Asian in North America.
Former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi championed Denison Avenue during the Canada Reads debates. It was eliminated on Day Two.
Wong is a Toronto writer, playwright and multidisciplinary artist who also works in sound installation, audio documentaries and photography.
Innes is a multidisciplinary artist from Toronto. He works in painting, installation, graphic and textile design, illustration, sign painting and tattooing.
LISTEN | Naheed Nenshi and Christina Wong meet on The Next Chapter:
Other names nominated this year include Hamilton writer Anuja Varghese for Chrysalis.
Nominated in the literary fiction category, Chrysalis is a short story collection that centres South Asian women, showing how they reclaim their power in a world that constantly undermines them. Exploring sexuality, family and cultural norms, this collection deals with desire and transformation.
Also nominated in the literary fiction category is Ottawa writer Kai Thomas for his debut novel In The Upper Country.
The debut novel is about a young Black woman 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.
In The Upper Country won the 2023 Writers' Trust Atwood Gibson Award for fiction and was shortlisted for the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction.
The three winners of the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prizes will be announced on June 18, 2024. The shortlists were selected by Kobo's team of booksellers.
There is one judge picking a winner from each category: veteran journalist and writer Robyn Doolittle will be the nonfiction judge, acclaimed novelist and poet Jeanette Lynes will be the literary fiction judge and bestselling author Ashley Audrain will judge the mystery prize.
Here are all the 2024 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer finalists:
Nonfiction:
- Wanda's War by Marsha Faubert
- The Definition of Beautiful by Charlotte Bellows
- The Autumn Ghost by Hannah Wunsch
- Quantum Physics Made Me Do It by Jérémie Harris
- Kings of Their Own Ocean by Karen Pinchin
- My Body Is Distant by Paige Maylott
Literary fiction:
- Dreaming Home by Lucian Childs
- Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese
- Nothing Good Happens in Wazirabad on Wednesday by Jamaluddin Aram
- In the Upper Country by Kai Thomas
- Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
- Denison Avenue by Daniel Innes and Christina Wong
Mystery:
- Final Look by Dianne Scott
- Perfect Shot by Steve Urszenyi
- HUGE by Brent Butt
- The Creep by Michael LaPointe
- The Mythmakers by Keziah Weir
- The Maid by Nita Prose
Last year's winners were Harrison Mooney in the nonfiction category for his memoir Invisible Boy, Erica McKeen in the fiction category for the novel Tear, and K.S. Covert in the speculative fiction category for The Petting Zoos.