Carol Shields Prize for Fiction Announces 2025 Winner and $150,000 Award Recipient (Exclusive)
PEOPLE can exclusively report that Canisia Lubrin was named the winner of the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction at a live event at the Chicago History Museum on Thursday, May 1.
The award recognizes novels, short story collections and graphic novels written by women and non-binary authors published in the United States and Canada. It is the largest English-language literary prize in the world that's awarded to women and non-binary authors.
Lubrin was honored for her work on Code Noir, published by Knopf Canada/Soft Skull Press. She will receive $150,000 and a five-night stay at the Fogo Island Inn in recognition of her accomplishments.
Related: Miranda July and Rachel Kushner Among Carol Shields 2025 Prize Longlist Nominees — See the Full List! (Exclusive)
As the author of books such as Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst, Lubrin has previously been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, OCM Bocas Prize and the Writers' Trust of Canada Rising Stars award, among others. Conde Noir is Lubrin's debut work of fiction.
The jury — made up of jury chair Diana Abu-Jaber, Norma Dunning, Kim Fu, Tessa McWatt and Jeanne Thornton — praised the book in a joint statement shared with PEOPLE.
'Code Noir contains multitudes," their statement said. "Its characters inhabit multi-layered landscapes of the past, present and future, confronting suffering, communion and metamorphosis."
"Canisia Lubrin's prose is polyphonic; the stories invite you to immerse yourself in both the real and the speculative, in the intimate and in sweeping moments of history. Riffing on the Napoleonic decree, Lubrin retunes the legacies of slavery, colonialism and violence," the statement continued. "This is a virtuoso collection that breaks new ground in short fiction."
Related: Miranda July, Sarah Manguso Among 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction Shortlist (Exclusive)
Alexandra Skoczylas, CEO of the Carol Shields Prize Foundation, also offered her "warmest congratulations to Canisia Lubrin on her win for Code Noir."
'It is a groundbreaking work of fiction selected from an incredibly strong shortlist," she said.
Related: V. V. Ganeshananthan Named Winner of the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
Finalists for the prize included Dominique Fortier and Rhonda Mullins (translator), Miranda July, Sarah Manguso, and Aube Rey Lescure. The four finalists will each receive $12,500.
Never miss a story — sign up for to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from juicy celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
The finalists, along with Lubrin, are all invited to participate in a group retreat residency in the Leighton Artist Studios, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
Read the original article on People
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Hamilton Spectator
12 minutes ago
- Hamilton Spectator
Cape Breton filmmaker's latest work inspired by Donald Marshall Jr.
MEMBERTOU - A road trip when Glenn Gould was 17 with his uncle, who had just been released from prison, was the inspiration for Gould's first feature length film due to be released early next year. His uncle wasn't just any ordinary guy. His uncle was Donald Marshall Jr. and the road trip was anything but ordinary. The new film, Jeffrey's Turn, is loosely based on real life as experienced by Gould. He wrote the script ten years ago and says he took some creative license with the words and events. But with Gould playing the role of his uncle, it's sure to be a must-see project. Gould was born and raised on the Membertou First Nation in Unama'ki (Cape Breton). He's been home recovering from a stroke that hit him around the end of May when he was already in post-production. Fortunately, the effects of the stroke have been mild and he is able to work remotely while others work on editing and finishing the project in Halifax. 'It caused a little delay,' he says, 'but nothing major. My editor has been working on a rough cut.' Jeffrey's Turn is about a 17-year-old named JR Sylliboy who lives on Black Bear First Nation with his widowed, environmentalist mother, Anna. He is contacted by his uncle Arty who has just been released from prison after being incarcerated in Maine for getting into a scrap with some locals. Once united, the pair venture on a summer road trip from Cape Breton Island back to Maine and they have an unforgettable journey where nothing seems to go right. In a director's note, Gould explains the premise of his film that is fictionally based on true events: 'A lot of us have that one uncle that your mother is always comparing you to, and she does not want you to 'end up like.' I grew up with not just one, but a few of those uncles. There was never a boring moment growing up, that's for sure. Growing up on the Rez can be absolutely amazing for the most part. The closeness of friends and family around. The freedom to roam around the community freely and safely. Although, one of the 'cons' of having that freedom, is that you are not sheltered or censored from anyone or anything. There are a lot of traumatizing events witnessed by many of us who grew up on the Rez. Events that have resulted with many of us walking through life, hurt and damaged, heavy and broken, burdened with layers of PTSD from the events we have witnessed.' COMING OF AGE STORY Gould has written a fictional 'coming-of-age' story about an impressionable, naive teenager about to be introduced to sides of life he never knew existed. An actor since his teen years, the 53-year-old Gould is best known in Canada for his starring role as Det. Jerry Commanda in the crime drama 'Cardinal' which ran for four seasons on television in both English and French. He has also had roles in such hits as 'Outlander', 'FBI Most Wanted', 'Murdoch Mysteries,' 'DaVinci's Inquest', and Liam Neeson's movie, 'Cold Pursuit.' Gould says a lot of Nova Scotian actors were used in the film which was shot mostly in Dartmouth, Halifax and Eastern Passage. There was some drone overhead filming that used Millbrook First Nation as a backdrop. As well as writing and acting in his labour of love, he's a producer and director of the movie he hopes to show at film festivals in 2026. Although he would have loved to shoot it in Cape Breton, the island still lacks the infrastructure needed for feature-length films and the cost was prohibitive. Two of the young actors playing the main character's friends are from Eskasoni. One young man will have a story of being 'discovered' by Gould to tell in the future. Gould says he met Sydney Francis, 21, at an event at Sydney's Highland Arts Theatre. 'I saw him and I thought, 'who is that kid?' He has a great look for film. He has long native hair and a really cool look to him. And then I was at a wake in Eskasoni and he was tending the sacred fire.' 'I asked him if he ever thought of acting and he said, 'not really.' And then he said: 'but that would be kind of cool.' Gould said he thought of him when the part in Jeffrey's Turn came up, so Francis auditioned. He got the part and is in his first movie. A second person from Eskasoni is Desna Michael Thomas, 24, who is cast as a non-binary character. Thomas has some previous acting experience. They were nominated for an outstanding performance award by Screen Nova Scotia in 2022 for their role in the movie Wildhood. It's been ten years since Gould started the draft for Jeffrey's Turn and told Halifax producer Hank White of Stone Cold Productions, about it. A couple of years later, government funding became available for film projects and White asked him about it again. He liked what he heard and optioned the project. And Gould says 'it's been a journey' ever since. WRONGFUL CONVICTION Being a part of the Donald Marshall Sr. and Jr. family changed the trajectory of Gould's life from the time he was a child. Donald Marshall Sr. – his grandfather – was Grand Chief of the Mi'kmaq Nation for 27 years. His son, and Gould's uncle, Donald Marshall Jr. was wrongfully convicted of murder in 1971 and spent 11 years in prison. His case unveiled systemic racism within the Canadian justice system. A Royal Commission later found the system failed him 'at virtually every turn.' Gould remembers the family always believing in his uncle's innocence, but the children in the family – including himself – were taunted at school before the conviction was overturned. Jeffrey's Turn is in part, an homage to his uncle. In fact, there is a scene in the movie where Gould, as Donald Marshall Jr., re-enacts the fight scene that led to his uncle's wrongful murder conviction. 'It's partially my story of bonding with my uncle, but it's his story too,' Gould says. The facts of the case are that in 1971, Donald Marshall Jr. and Sandy Seale, both teenagers, came across Roy Ebsary and Jimmy MacNeil in Wentworth Park in downtown Sydney. A fight broke out and Seale was stabbed by Ebsary who already had a criminal record for violence. Despite Marshall Jr. flagging police down to get help for Seale and telling them about Ebsary and MacNeil who fled the park, it was Marshall they arrested for murder. After a trial in which he always maintained his innocence, Marshall was convicted and sentenced to life in prison. Ten years later, Ebsary confessed to the crime. An appeals court overturned the conviction, and a Royal Commission investigated the case, finding significant flaws in the justice system and highlighting racial bias. Marshall was Mi'kmaq and the victim, Seale, was black. JUSTICE DENIED It was when the National Film Board made the movie: 'Justice Denied', and Gould drove his grandparents to the set every day, (they played themselves in the film), that Gould thought acting was something he would like to be involved in. 'When they were filming, I was living with my grandparents and driving for them. I met the producers, director and actors.' 'One of them was a native actor from Manitoba, In fact I had to ask him: 'so you're a real native like me?' And he said yeah. He was like, 'I'm from the trap line in Manitoba.' 'I didn't even know what that was! So I asked and he said it meant that his family moved around from camp to camp.' He told Gould that his uncle was founder of the Native Earth Theatre Company in Toronto, and that's how he was working in film. Two years later, not finding much to keep him in Cape Breton around 1990, Gould travelled to Toronto, introduced himself to the people at what is now the oldest professional Indigenous theatre company in Canada, and lived the struggling actor lifestyle for a few months until the opportunity came along to act in Ojibway playwright, Drew Hayden Taylor 's one-act play: Toronto at Dreamer's Rock. Gould is happy to have the opportunity to write, act and direct in something that will remind people of his uncle's story. 'I took a bit of creative license to make it a good story,' he says. He adds that it's a story within a story – but it's an important one. Error! Sorry, there was an error processing your request. There was a problem with the recaptcha. Please try again. You may unsubscribe at any time. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use and privacy policy . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google privacy policy and terms of service apply. Want more of the latest from us? Sign up for more at our newsletter page .
Hamilton Spectator
an hour ago
- Hamilton Spectator
In her gripping whodunnit ‘Fox,' Joyce Carol Oates jolts with a superb twist ending
Have you ever wondered why turkey vultures are bald? The answer is not pleasant. Turkey vultures feed on the viscera of dead animals, and sliding their heads into and out of carcasses — preferably through the anus — is easier without feathers. Turkey vultures are scavengers; they see opportunity where others can't bring themselves to look. In this they bear some resemblance to serious novelists, like Joyce Carol Oates , who, at 87, has made an astonishing career in part by turning over what others wouldn't touch, sliding into the darkest orifices, pushing forward until she's found all the tenderest bits. Her novels can be hard to stomach, but for this she can blame reality. Some truths are revolting. Oates's latest novel is 'Fox' (Hogarth), which begins at the Wieland Swamp in southern New Jersey, where turkey vultures circle ominously over what turns out to be a human corpse. At first, the corpse is unidentifiable — due to 'significant animal activity,' as the police chief puts it — but is found alongside a vehicle belonging to Francis Fox, a popular new teacher at the prestigious local prep school, the Langhorne Academy. 'Fox,' by Joyce Carol Oates, Hogarth, 672 pages, $42. In an interview with People , Oates described the novel as a 'classic whodunit,' and the unfolding of the police inquiry — and multiple related storylines — is mostly propulsive, despite the novel's 672 pages and some tiresome stylistic tics ( so many words are in italics ). The most impressive structural feature is the superb twist ending. This is a book that continues to change shape until the very last page. But the novel's real interest lies in its anatomy of the crimes of Francis Fox — a predator, as his name implies, who preys on his middle-school students — and the institutions and norms that make his behaviour possible. Oates does not seek out the origins of his conduct in some childhood trauma or — as in the case of 'Lolita''s Humbert Humbert — a thwarted erotic encounter, but in Fox's own sense of superiority. Fox is the product of a partial Ivy League education — he was ejected from a Columbia PhD program for plagiarism — and the heir to a Romantic tradition that insists on the individual's right to transgress convention in pursuit of his own personal ideal of beauty. Fox quotes Blake and Thoreau as his grandiloquent authorities — 'God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages' — as he flatters himself that his obsession with prepubescent girls is a sign of esthetic refinement. Fox keeps a bust of Edgar Allan Poe — who married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia — on his desk, and fills his apartment with the paintings of the controversial French Polish painter Balthus, best known for his prurient portraits of very young female models. In this way, Oates's analysis of child abuse goes beyond the psychology of the criminal to indict American society, where every educated child is expected to know Poe's poems and where Balthus's portraits hang in the Met. On a more immediate level, the adult characters in 'Fox' are guilty of extreme neglect. In the same interview with People, Oates described Fox as a 'charming con man,' but the novel has no sympathy for the adults who let themselves be conned. Teachers on hiring committees neglect to look into Fox's past, though several red flags call out for closer scrutiny. Later, rather than raising alarm bells, the attention Fox receives from his female students elicits jealousy from his petty colleagues. Parents, too, are fooled by Fox, and lulled into a moral stupor by their reluctance to believe the worst. Even those who harbour suspicions prove unwilling to jeopardize their professional status by levelling accusations against a teacher who has made himself a favourite of the headmistress. One of the few adult characters to see through Francis Fox is a lawyer Fox hires to help him through his first scandal with a student. (Fox tries to quote Kierkegaard to the lawyer: ' The crowd is a lie … The individual is the highest truth. ') The lawyer has nothing but contempt for Fox, but professional pride makes him pursue the best possible settlement for his client — an outcome that all but ensures that Fox will be able to continue teaching. How did things get so bad? The novel hints that the community's (almost complete) failure to stop Fox has something to do with the fragmentation of the community itself. The rich and the poor of 'Fox''s Atlantic County have almost nothing to do with each other. Instead, the locals — 'poor whites,' 'old families that have failed to thrive in the twenty-first century, left behind by the computerized, high-tech economy' — are filled with resentment for the smug nouveau riche who try to ignore them while enjoying a much more comfortable existence, one they seek to make hereditary by sending their children to Langhorne and onward to the Ivy League. Political scientists like Katherine Cramer have been warning of the growing rents in the American social fabric caused by the increasing distance between the well-off and the hard-done-by. As Cramer and her co-author put it in a recent piece in the Hill , 'Constitutional democracy flourishes when people feel common purpose with one another, and it is impossible for people who never come into contact to build that common purpose.' The institutions depicted by Oates serve not to advance a common purpose — or enforce a shared morality — but to prop up the strivers while grinding down the rest. This is an unflattering portrait, but not a hopeless one. Over a long and illustrious career — including a National Book Award for Fiction (1970), a National Humanities Medal (2010) and a 'by the same author' page in 'Fox' that looks like the sides of the Stanley Cup — Oates has sometimes been accused of trafficking in moral turpitude for its own sake. A 1991 review of 'Heat and Other Stories' claimed that 'Ms. Oates … is as cavalierly cynical as a teenager. Her stock in trade is precisely not to be shocked, and she pretends to be equally, mildly, analytically interested in all forms of human behaviour, however grotesque.' But 'Fox' reads more like a quiet jeremiad against complacency and hypocrisy, masquerading as a coolly analytic murder mystery. In a 1972 article about the role of literature in America, Oates claimed that the serious writer must recognize that his or her destiny is inescapably 'part of the nation's spiritual condition.' More than 50 years later, Oates has become an integral part of her nation's spiritual condition, circling its revolting truths as the tireless turkey vulture circles a kill. A weak stomach is no excuse for looking away.
San Francisco Chronicle
an hour ago
- San Francisco Chronicle
Norwegian author Ingvar Ambjørnsen dies at age 69
STOCKHOLM (AP) — Ingvar Ambjørnsen, a Norwegian author who mixed a sharp, even dark tone with humor and empathy in works that depicted the lives of the oppressed and vulnerable, has died, his publisher said. He was 69. The Cappelen Damm publishing house did not specify the cause of death. Ambjørnsen had long been public with his battle against a lung illness called chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. Born on May 20, 1956, in Tönsberg — described on his German-language author website as 'Norway's most bar-filled town' — Ambjørnsen grew up in Larvik and worked in various jobs in industry and psychiatry before publishing his first documentary novel in 1981. Four years later, he moved to Hamburg, where he lived for decades. 'His books are characterized by powerful, realistic descriptions of the seamier side of life,' the publisher said. Ambjørnsen became one of the publisher's best-known contemporary authors with four novels built around the character Elling, a shy and imaginative outsider who coped with the funny but endearing foibles of daily life after release from a psychiatric hospital. The comedy 'Elling' — the story of two recently released mental patients bunking together in an apartment in Oslo — was nominated in 2001 for an Academy Award as best foreign-language film. The tale landed on Broadway in 2010, with a play starring Denis O'Hare and Brendan Fraser: One of the misfits was fixated on his mother, the other obsessed with sex. According to the author website, Ambjørnsen wrote 18 novels and three collections of short stories, as well as several books for children and youth. A newly written collection of short stories is set to go on sale in Norway on July 31.
