2025 Giller Prize
Shortlist
2025 Shortlist
The 2025 Giller Prize shortlist was announced on Monday, October 6, 2025.
The five titles were chosen from a longlist of 14 books announced on September 15, 2025.
Jury Citation: We Love You, Bunny
After Samantha Heather Mackey publishes her acclaimed debut novel based on her experiences in an elite graduate creative writing program, her former classmates plot to kidnap her and tell their side of the story, at any cost. What unfolds is a delightfully deranged tale of rivalries, rabbits, murder, desperation and madness. We Love You, Bunny is an unhinged waltz through the corridors of creative academia, blending satire and surreal magical chaos as artistic creations stumble through the night with axes and fall in love, frat parties end in murder, and creative jealousies fuel uncanny powers. As hilarious as it is inventive, Awad’s novel is refreshingly original, bold in imagination and daring in its execution, asking us to consider: What do we owe to art, and what, if anything, does art owe us in return?
Jury Citation: The Tiger and the Cosmonaut
Eddy Boudel Tan’s The Tiger and The Cosmonaut examines the complications inherent to immigration and assimilation within the contexts of sexuality and race in Canada’s rural and urban landscapes. We follow the brooding Casper Han’s desperate search for his father who has inexplicably disappeared in the middle of the night. Accompanied by his long-term boyfriend to the rural British Columbia town of his childhood, Casper’s homecoming forces him to reexamine his adult relationships with his siblings while reckoning with truths about his first love, all while being pushed back into the well of grief caused by the disappearance of his twin brother when they were children. While ruminating on the ways in which the kinetic forces of loss can ricochet through a family, this novel ponders what we owe our families of origin and the sometimes contradictory narratives we tell about ourselves, constructions that both hold us together and push us apart. A deeply introspective novel told as an unfolding mystery, this book blurs our vision in relation to the complicated nature of truth while also showing us how stories keep us sane.
Jury Citation: The Paris Express
At 8:30 a.m. on Oct. 22, 1895, the Paris Express train departs from Granville to begin her journey towards the capital, driven by Guillaume Pellerinand and his stoker Victor Garnier, and pulling nearly a dozen cars filled with passengers, among them Mado, a disillusioned worker; Blonska, an impoverished spinster; seven-year-old Maurice Marland, travelling alone to meet his father; and Henry Tanner, an American painter. None are aware that Engine 721 is hurtling them towards disaster. Interwoven with meticulous historical detail and narrated by an ever-shifting ensemble of voices, this is a subtle, intimate story of human experience and a masterful display of technique infused with lyrical imagery and quiet reflection. As intricately crafted as a station master’s pocket watch, The Paris Express gains momentum and depth with each chapter, propelling us towards an inevitable, and deeply moving, conclusion. Donoghue’s novel unearths the smallest fears and deepest desires hidden inside ourselves and our fellow travellers, and shows us who we can become when faced with certain catastrophe.
Jury Citation: The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus
Part mystery, part coming-of-age, The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus is a luminous first novel by author Emma Knight. A meditation on identity, memory, and the many forms of motherhood, it follows Penelope “Pen” Winters, a Canadian student through her first year at the University of Edinburgh, as she tries to unravel a family secret. With charm, insight, and emotional precision, Knight deftly weaves themes of intergenerational legacy and self-discovery into a narrative both intimate and resonant.
Jury Citation: Pick a Colour
In Pick a Colour, a former boxer-turned-manicurist spends an ostensibly ordinary summer day at her salon, quietly navigating the tension between her outward anonymity and her sharp, deeply intelligent, inner life. In this exquisite novel, intelligence isn’t inherited through education, status, or privilege–it’s earned. With an inimitable style that decentralizes the English language, crackling wit, and profound confidence, author Souvankham Thammavongsa challenges our biases and insists that we never look at a nail salon, or its workers, the same way again. A master of form and restraint, Thammavongsa once again affirms her place as one of the most vital literary voices of our time.
2025 Longlist
The 2025 Giller Prize jury announced its longlist on Monday, September 15, 2025.
The 14 titles were chosen from a field of more than 100 books submitted by publishers across Canada.
Other Worlds by André Alexis
ANDRÉ ALEXIS is an author of novels, short stories, and plays. His 2015 novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the Giller Prize, Canada Reads, and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. In 2017, he was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize for fiction. His internationally acclaimed debut, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award and the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. He is also the author of Days by Moonlight, which won the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and was longlisted for the Giller Prize, The Hidden Keys, Pastoral, Asylum, and Despair and Other Stories of Ottawa. Alexis lives in Toronto.
We Love You, Bunny by Mona Awad
Mona Awad is the bestselling author of the novels Rouge, All’s Well, Bunny, and 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl. She is a three-time finalist for a Goodreads Choice Award, the recipient of an Amazon Best First Novel Award, and she was shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Bunny was a finalist for a New England Book Award and was named a Best Book of 2019 by Time, Vogue, and the New York Public Library. It is currently being developed for film with Bad Robot Productions. Rouge is being adapted for film by Fremantle and Sinestra. Margaret Atwood named Awad her literary heir in The New York Times’s T Magazine. She teaches fiction in the creative writing program at Syracuse University and is based in Boston.
An Astonishment of Stars by Kirti Bhadresa
KIRTI BHADRESA’s fiction and non-fiction have appeared in The Fiddlehead, PrairieFire, The Quarantine Review, The Sprawl, and Room, and she has been a finalist for the Alberta Magazine Publishers Association Award in the category of Feature Writing. Bhadresa lives with her family in Calgary, AB, on Treaty 7 territory.
The Tiger and the Cosmonaut by Eddy Boudel Tan
EDDY BOUDEL TAN has been a finalist for the Edmund White Award, the ReLit Best Novel Award, and the Ferro-Grumley Award for his novels After Elias and The Rebellious Tide. He was named a Rising Star by Writers’ Trust of Canada in 2021. His short stories can be found in Joyland, Yolk, and various literary journals and anthologies. The Tiger and the Cosmonaut is his third novel. He lives in Vancouver with his husband.
Instagram: @eddyautomatic
Website: www.eddyboudeltan.com
Sugaring Off by Fanny Britt, translated by Susan Ouriou
FANNY BRITT is a playwright, writer, and translator. She is the winner of multiple Governor General’s Literary Awards, a Libris Award, a Joe Shuster Award, and was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for Children’s Literature. Faires les sucres won the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-language Fiction in 2021. Britt has written a dozen plays and translated more than fifteen works by many American, Canadian, British, and Irish playwrights. Born in Northern Quebec, Britt lives in Montreal.
Instagram: @fannybrittenpublic
SUSAN OURIOU is an award-winning literary translator (French and Spanish to English) and fiction writer. She has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation on seven occasions, winning for her translation of Pieces of Me by Charlotte Gingras. She also translated Catherine Leroux’s The Future, winner of CBC Canada Reads in 2024. Other translations of hers have been featured on the International Board on Books for Youth’s honor lists. Ouriou is also the author of two novels, Damselfish, and the critically acclaimed Nathan, and the editor of two anthologies, the trilingual Beyond Words: Translating the World and the bilingual Languages of Our Land: Indigenous Poems and Stories from Quebec. She lives in Calgary.
Instagram: @susanouriou
Still by Joanna Cockerline
JOANNA COCKERLINE is a a CBC Literary Awards prizewinner who has been published in national and international journals and magazines such as Room, The Fiddlehead, En Route, and International Human Rights Arts. She was nominated for the Pushcart Prize in 2022.
Joanna earned her BA and MA in Literature at the University of Guelph and completed a graduate program at the Humber School for Writers with two-time Booker Prize winner Peter Carey.
She co-authored the short story collection Seeing Our Sisters alongside Kenyan authors in The Girlship collective in 2024. She is actively at work on her next novel.
A long-time street outreach volunteer with an organization that won the City of Kelowna Volunteer Organization of the Year Award, Joanna has recently co-founded a street outreach organization dedicated to the unhoused community and, particularly, street-level sex workers.
Joanna lives with her family in the traditional, unceded Syilx Okanagan Territory of Kelowna, BC, where she teaches literature, communications, and creative writing at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Okanagan.
The Paris Express by Emma Donoghue
Emma Donoghue is a novelist, screenwriter, and playwright. Room sold almost three million copies, won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and was shortlisted for the Man Booker and Orange Prizes. Donoghue scripted the Canadian-Irish film adaptation, which was nominated for four Academy Awards, including Best Picture. The Wonder was shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Donoghue co-wrote the 2022 screen adaptation for Netflix. The Pull of the Stars was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Haven was shortlisted for the 2024 Dublin Literary Award. Donoghue’s fiction ranges from the contemporary (Stir-Fy, Hood, Landing, Touchy Subjects, Akin) to the historical (Learned by Heart, Slammerkin, The Sealed Letter, Astray, Frog Music) and includes two books for young readers, The Lotterys Plus One and The Lotterys More or Less.
Website: www.emmadonoghue.com
The Sideways Life of Denny Voss by Holly Kennedy
HOLLY KENNEDY was born and raised in Alberta, Canada. Today, she lives in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains with her family and their Newfoundland dog, Wallace.
She is the author of four novels and her books have been translated into multiple languages. When she’s not writing, you’ll typically find her reading, spending time with family, or (her not-so-secret obsession) watching true crime TV shows like Dateline.
The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus by Emma Knight
EMMA KNIGHT (she/her) is an author, journalist and entrepreneur. She has an MA in Journalism and an MSc. in International Development from Sciences Po in Paris. Emma’s writing about books, maternal health and more has appeared in Literary Hub, Vogue, The Globe and Mail, The Walrus and The New York Times. She is the creator and co-host of the culture podcast Fanfare. In 2014, Emma co-founded a now multi-award-winning organic beverage company called Greenhouse, where she is Head of Brand. She is the author of two bestselling cookbooks, How to Eat with One Hand (2021) and The Greenhouse Cookbook (2017). Emma lives in Toronto with her family. The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus is her first novel.
Instagram: @emma.knightwrites
Wild Life by Amanda Leduc
AMANDA LEDUC is a disabled writer whose most recent novel, The Centaur’s Wife, is “an exquisite magical world, perfectly rendered, for [a] dark and wonderful story about the dream life of outsiders and the disabled” (Heather O’Neill). Her non-fiction book Disfigured: On Fairy Tales, Disability, and Making Space was nominated for the 2020 Governor General’s Literary Award. Her essays and stories have appeared in Canada, U.S., the U.K. and Australia, and she speaks regularly across North America on accessibility and the role of disability in storytelling. Amanda holds a master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of St. Andrews. She has cerebral palsy and presently makes her home in Hamilton, Ontario, where she lives with a very lovable dog named Sitka, who once ate and peed on a manuscript. (Everyone’s a critic, it seems.)
Instagram: @amanda.leduc
Website: amandaleduc.com
We, The Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek
OTONIYA JULIANE OKOT BITEK writes poetry and fiction. Her first collection, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection of poetry, Song & Dread, is published by Talonbooks. Otoniya was born in Kenya to Ugandan parents and has lived in Canada for more than three decades. Her short story “Going Home” received a special mention in the 2004 Commonwealth Short Fiction Prize. We, the Kindling is her first novel.
The Road Between Us by Bindu Suresh
BINDU SURESH is the author of the novella 26 Knots (2019). A former journalist, she has written hundreds of articles for various newspapers, including the Montreal Gazette and the Buenos Aires Herald. She has a degree in literature from Columbia University and a medical degree from McGill University, and currently works full-time as a pediatrician. She currently lives in Montreal with her husband, her seven-year-old daughter, and her five-year-old son.
Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa
SOUVANKHAM THAMMAVONGSA is the author of four poetry books and the short story collection, How to Pronounce Knife, winner of the 2020 Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award. Her stories have won an O. Henry Prize and appeared in The New Yorker, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, The Paris Review, and Granta. Pick a Colour is her first novel.
You've Changed by Ian Williams
IAN WILLIAMS is the award-winning author of seven acclaimed books of fiction, poetry, and nonfiction. His debut novel, Reproduction, won the 2019 Giller Prize. His first work of nonfiction, Disorientation: Being Black in the World, was a finalist for the Hilary Weston Prize for Nonfiction, as well as a CBC and Boston Globe best book of the year. In 2024, Williams delivered the CBC Massey Lectures, which became the bestselling book What I Mean to Say, on rehabilitating conversation in divisive times. A trustee for the Griffin Poetry Prize, Williams is a professor of English and director of the Creative Writing program at the University of Toronto.
Instagram: @notianwilliams
JURY CITATION
“The books on this year’s Giller Prize longlist represent a range of Canadian identities and experiences: characters on the open prairies, claustrophobic communities in our urban centers, and boundless representations of the imagined worlds in which Canadians find themselves. The powerful voices on this longlist depict a Canada and a world that’s compelling, dangerous, and simultaneously compassionate and inviting. These works illuminate the everyday and the otherworldly, considering what it means to be human in these funny, sad, joyful, and complicated times. Our longlist explicates the best and worst of us and elevates stories that are concerned with our country and the world beyond its borders, our preoccupations with the land we inhabit and disturb. These books investigate what it means to live here. Whenever that might be. They uncover unexpected communities and friendships, rendering with precision and beauty the anxieties and heartaches tethered to life and death. These texts demonstrate how we are an interconnected, global community, however cacophonous our collective cries. The power of the voices on this year’s longlist astonished the judges. These authors urgently compel readers to be transported, to be lifted up, and ultimately, to love.”
2025 Jury
The Giller Prize is pleased to announce the three-member jury panel for the 2025 Prize.
Dionne Irving
Dionne Irving
Dionne Irving is originally from Mississauga, Ontario. She is the author of Quint and The Islands. Her work has appeared in Story, Boulevard, LitHub, Missouri Review, and New Delta Review, among other journals and magazines. The Islands was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, the Giller Prize, the New American Voices Award and the Clara Johnson Award. Irving teaches in the Creative Writing Program and the Initiative on Race and Resilience at the University of Notre Dame.
Loghan Paylor
Loghan Paylor
Loghan Paylor is a queer, trans author who lives in Abbotsford, British Columbia. Their short fiction and essays have previously appeared in Room and Prairie Fire, among others. Paylor has a Master’s in creative writing from the University of British Columbia, and a day job as a professional geek. Their first novel, The Cure for Drowning, was longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize and named a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2024.
Deepa Rajagopalan
Deepa Rajagopalan
Deepa Rajagopalan is the author of the short story collection, Peacocks of Instagram, shortlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. She won the 2021 PEN Canada New Voices Award for the title story of the collection. She has an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph. She has lived in many cities across India, the United States and Canada. Deepa works in the tech industry in Toronto.
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