2026 Giller Prize Shortlist
2026 Giller Prize Shortlist
2026 Shortlist
The 2026 Giller Prize shortlist was announced on Monday, October 5, 2026.
The five titles were chosen from a longlist of 14 books announced on September 8, 2026.
Wild People Quiet by Tara Gereaux
Set in 1946 Saskatchewan, Wild People Quiet follows Florence Banks—a Métis woman “passing” as white—whose meticulously orchestrated life in the predominantly white town of Torduvalle begins to unravel when she discovers the government’s plans to force the Métis off their land. A stunning exploration of colonial trauma, self-acceptance, and the sacredness of community, Wild People Quiet follows an agonized Florence forced to choose between the community that birthed her and the life that she has built for herself. An intimate and resonant tale filled with quiet intensity, Wild People Quiet invites readers to reflect on their own family histories, the parts of themselves they choose to hide, and the hardships that have made them stronger.
Eliza Sunshine by Michelle Good
A sweeping chronicle that spans three generations of Cree women, Eliza Sunshine introduces us to the titular character as she’s returning home from residential school. Her nôhkom, Swan, tells stories of the strong matriarchs who shaped Swan in her childhood – and the unimaginable hardship inflicted on Eliza’s ancestors. Decades later, Eliza recounts her own adventures to her daughter, Ella, whose embrace of her Indigenous identity clashes with Eliza’s desire to protect her daughter from the horrors of colonial violence and discrimination. Lovingly written to evoke a rich oral storytelling tradition, Eliza Sunshine guides readers through memories of adversity and triumph, illustrating the power of storytelling as a means of healing and overcoming struggle. Drawing heavily from the author’s own family history, Eliza Sunshine is a masterful, deeply personal snapshot of a tragic chapter of Canadian history, navigating readers with unflinching honesty through a story of hope and strength.
Your Breath in Charcoal by Nicholas Herring
An uproarious, undeniably Maritime tale, Your Breath in Charcoal recounts the story of Knickle: an East Coast “everyman” on a road trip from Prince Edward Island ‘down the road’ to “Tah-ron-ah.” “Swimming in the wonder and potential of life, of bruises and injuries, but also of quiet resilience,” Your Breath in Charcoal is a deeply philosophical narrative filled with pop culture references, literary allusions, and mordant, quotable witticisms. With Knickle’s distinctive voice at its center, Your Breath in Charcoal is a character study of a young man learning how to live his life, facing the complexities of the modern world in a riotously funny working-class odyssey filled with love, loss, and profound hope.
The Small Ones by Nazanine Hozar
In The Small Ones, Nazanine Hozar gives voice to a group of children made to carry the consequences of adult ambition; children who are psychologically and spiritually manipulated into believing that their sacrifices serve a greater purpose. Through deceptively simple, lyrical prose, Hozar maintains the humanity of this rag-tag community in a story shaped by war, indoctrination, and the recurring cycle of violence. Friendship, imagination, and the families the children create for themselves become counterforces to a world that has failed to protect them. Using an intricate three-part structure, The Small Ones shifts the question in readers’ minds from what will happen to these children to how these children arrived in their circumstances, confronting us with the toll that war takes on the world’s most innocent citizens. Restrained in its telling yet expansive in its meaning, The Small Ones transforms the experiences of children caught in conflict into a deeply affecting examination of sacrifice, power, survival, and the enduring humanity of those whom society deems expendable.
Good People by Patmeena Sabit
A polyphonic, layered, and brilliant debut novel, Patmeena Sabit’s Good People is the story of the familiar, resilient, and stubbornly silent Sharaf family. Instead of telling their own story, it is left to a rotating cast of relatives, neighbours, friends, and even strangers to account for the Sharaf family’s movements and motivations, chronicling the Sharafs’ rise to success from desperate, distrusted refugees to members of the wealthy and exclusive gated community of Fairfax, Virginia. Using these observers to speculate on the pressures and dynamics endured by an immigrant family, Sabit ultimately leaves it to the reader to determine what has brought the Sharaf clan such scrutiny and attention. Are they victims of a tragic accident? Or are they the perpetrators of a terrible crime?
2026 Longlist
The 2026 Giller Prize jury announced its longlist on Tuesday, September 8, 2026.
The 14 titles were chosen from a field of more than 140 books submitted by publishers across Canada.
The Winter Witch by Jennifer Chevalier
JENNIFER CHEVALIER worked for several years at the BBC in London before moving home to Ottawa where she is currently the showrunner for CBC Radio’s long-running weekly political affairs program, The House. The journalism and documentaries she’s led have won a Gracie, several RTDNAs, and a CAJ Award for investigative journalism. She lives in Ottawa with her husband and two children.
Dodge City by Patrick deWitt
PATRICK DEWITT is the author of the novels The Librarianist (an instant #1 national bestseller and winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour), French Exit (an international bestseller and a finalist for the Giller Prize), The Sisters Brothers (winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Leacock Medal for Humour, and a finalist for the Booker Prize and the Giller Prize), and the critically acclaimed Undermajordomo Minor and Ablutions. Born in British Columbia, he now resides in Portland, Oregon.
The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn
PATRICIA FINN is a writer, ghostwriter, and editor. She was educated in Canada and New Zealand, where she completed post-graduate work in English and classics with a focus on Aristotle and Athenian tragedy. She has worked for television networks and production companies in both countries, including CBC and Television New Zealand. She has family roots in Canada and the United States and now lives in Vancouver.
Wild People Quiet by Tara Gereaux
TARA GEREAUX is the author of Saltus, which was shortlisted for the 2022 ReLit Novel Award and three Saskatchewan Book Awards; and Size of a Fist, a teen novella, which was also shortlisted for two Saskatchewan Book Awards. Tara holds an MFA in creative writing from UBC and has worked as a writer and story editor for film and television. She is a citizen of the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan and lives in Regina on Treaty 4 territory and the homeland of the Métis.
The Unravelling of Ou by Hollay Ghadery
HOLLAY GHADERY is an Iranian-Canadian multi-genre writer living in Ontario on Anishinaabe land. Fuse, her memoir of mixed-race identity and mental health, (Guernica Editions 2021) won the 2023 Canadian Bookclub Award for Nonfiction/Memoir. She is the author of Rebellion Box (Radiant Press, 2023) and Widow Fantasies (Gordon Hill Press, 2024). She is a host on The New Books Network and HOWL on CIUT 89.5 FM, and the Poet Laureate of Scugog Township. Learn more about Hollay at www.hollayghadery.com. The Unraveling of Ou, is her debut novel.
Instagram: @hollayghadery
Facebook: @Hollay Ghadery-Writer
Eliza Sunshine by Michelle Good
MICHELLE GOOD is a writer of Cree ancestry and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree nation in Saskatchewan. After working with Indigenous communities and organizations for 25 years, she obtained her law degree as a 43-year-old single mom, and then spent 14 years advocating for residential school survivors. She earned her MFA in creative writing while still practising law. Her debut novel, Five Little Indians, became a #1 bestseller and won the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Kobo Emerging Writer’s Prize, and CBC’s Canada Reads, and was nominated for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Giller Prize among other honours. Good’s bestselling book Truth Telling: Seven Conversations about Indigenous Life in Canada was shortlisted for the Basillie Prize for Public Policy. In 2025, she won the Indspire Award for Arts and was admitted as a member of the Order of Canada.
Website: michellegood.ca
Your Breath in Charcoal by Nicholas Herring
NICHOLAS HERRING’S head-spinning debut novel, Some Hellish, won the prestigious Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Critics described it as “heart-wrenchingly beautiful,” “irreverent, screwball, and inspired,” and “a winding, raucous ride.” His writing has also appeared in The Puritan and The Fiddlehead.
Herring graduated from St. Jerome’s University with an honours degree in English Literature and attended the University of Toronto, where he completed an MA in Creative Writing. He lives in Murray Harbour, Prince Edward Island, where he works as a fisherman and a carpenter. Your Breath in Charcoal is Nicholas Herring’s second novel.
The Small Ones by Nazanine Hozar
NAZANINE HOZAR was born in Tehran, Iran, before coming to Canada as a child. Her debut novel, Aria, is an award-nominated bestseller that was published to international acclaim. The Small Ones is her second novel. Nazanine Hozar lives in Vancouver, British Columbia.
The Novice of Holloway Hall by Wayne Johnston
WAYNE JOHNSTON was born and raised in Goulds, Newfoundland. His #1 nationally bestselling novels include First Snow, Last Light; The Custodian of Paradise; The Navigator of New York; and The Colony of Unrequited Dreams. Baltimore’s Mansion, a memoir about his father and grandfather, won the inaugural Charles Taylor Prize for literary non-fiction. The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, published in 1998, was nominated for sixteen national and international awards including the Giller Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, and was a Canada Reads finalist defended by Justin Trudeau. In 2011, Johnston was awarded the Writers’ Trust Engel/Findley Award honouring the work of a writer in mid-career. In 2023, his memoir Jennie’s Boy won The Stephen Leacock Gold Medal for Humour and was also a Canada Reads finalist, in 2025.
Daphnis and Chloe by Colin McAdam
COLIN MCADAM is an internationally acclaimed novelist with a PhD from Cambridge on translations of Ancient Greek—the original language of Daphnis and Chloe. He has written non-fiction for Harpers, Granta, Salon, and Hazlitt, among other journals, and his novels have won or been shortlisted for several prizes including the Amazon Best First Novel Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize and the Giller Prize. He lives in Quebec.
Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen
MAI NGUYEN is a Vietnamese Canadian author whose debut novel, Sunshine Nails, was longlisted for Canada Reads and named one of the best books of 2023 by NPR and CBC. Her journalism has appeared in Wired, The Washington Post, and The Toronto Star. Raised in Halifax, she now lives in Toronto with her husband, daughter, and French bulldog.
Riverwork by Lisa Robertson
LISA ROBERTSON is a Canadian poet, essayist, and novelist who lives in France. Born in Toronto in 1961, she was a long-time resident of Vancouver. She has published nine books of poetry, most recently Boat (2022), and two books of essays, Nilling (2012), and Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture (2003). Her 2021 book Anemones: A Simone Weil Project (If I Can’t Dance, Amsterdam), an annotated translation of Weil’s 1942 essay on the troubadour poets and the Cathar heresy, is the most recent outcome of wide rime, her ongoing study of medieval troubadour culture and poetics. She has been a visiting poet and professor at Princeton University, University of Cambridge, U East Anglia, UC Berkeley, UC San Diego, Piet Zwart Institute, Simon Fraser University, American University of Paris, Naropa, and California College of the Arts. In 2017 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Letters by Emily Carr University of Art and Design, and in 2018 the Foundation for the Contemporary Arts in New York awarded her the inaugural C. D. Wright Award in Poetry. Her novel The Baudelaire Fractal was shortlisted for the 2021 Governor General’s Award for Fiction and has been published in French, Swedish, and German translations. Riverwork is her second novel.
Good People by Patmeena Sabit
PATMEENA SABIT was born in Kabul a few years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. When she was a month old, her family fled the conflict and became refugees in Pakistan, joining the millions of other Afghans that had sought refuge there. They later moved to the United States and she grew up in Virginia. She currently lives in Toronto.
Instagram: @patmeenasabit
At Sea in a Sieve by Cordelia Strube
CORDELIA STRUBE is the author of 11 critically acclaimed novels. Winner of the CBC literary competition, she has been nominated for the Governor General’s Award and the Trillium Book Award, and longlisted for the Giller Prize. Her novel, On the Shores of Darkness There is Light, won the City of Toronto Book Award. Strube divides her time between her Toronto home and her country house in Yarker, ON.
JURY CITATION
“This year’s Giller Prize longlist was chosen by a jury of independent Canadian booksellers: professional readers who, like the writers whose work they selected, live and work in communities across Canada. These stories take place in both rural hamlets and big cities; from the shores of Prince Edward Island to the expanse of the Prairies to the landscapes of British Columbia; from the seventeenth century to the present day – and beyond our borders and conventional notions of time and space. These authors grapple with our collective history with humour, openness, and compassion, fearlessly chronicling our challenges, our tragedies and our triumphs. Canada is a collection of people and places such as these. And at a time when our nation’s cultural identity is being tested, it is more important than ever to write, read, and reflect on our stories. This longlist is an extraordinary collection from which Canadians can discover themselves.”
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