About
Celebrate the best in contemporary Canadian literature at an evening showcasing the 2026 Giller Prize shortlisted authors. Join these exceptional authors as they read from their nominated works, share insights into their craft, and discuss the stories that earned them a place among Canada’s literary elite. Don’t miss this chance to discover the voices shaping the future of Canadian fiction, hosted by Antonio Michael Downing.
Giller Prize Shortlist:
- Tara Gereaux, Wild People Quiet (Scribner Canada)
- Michelle Good, Eliza Sunshine (Random House Canada)
- Nicholas Herring, Your Breath in Charcoal (Goose Lane Editions)
- Nazanine Hozar, The Small Ones (Knopf Canada)
- Patmeena Sabit, Good People (Crown)
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
A taut, exquisitely rendered story exploring the repercussions of a woman’s decision to hide her Métis identity while living in a small, predominantly white prairie town in the 1940s, for readers of The Berry Pickers, Tommy Orange, and The Vanishing Half.
Torduvalle, Saskatchewan, 1946.
Florence has created a beautiful life for herself. Her home is immaculate; she is a model employee at Pratt’s Insurance, where she works as a secretary.
Published by Simon & Schuster Canada
NATIONAL BESTSELLER
From the award-winning and bestselling author of Five Little Indians comes a powerful family saga following three generations of Cree women and the storytelling tradition that connects them to each other.
Sometimes I feel that I wasn’t born at all, rather sculpted and formed by the storms of my grandmother’s life.
When Eliza comes home from her first year at residential school, she is barely recognizable to her Nôhkom, Swan. Once bright-eyed and curious, Eliza is now stick-thin with roughly shorn hair and dull, listless eyes.
Published by Penguin Random House Canada
“I said, ‘the pair of us look like some scratch ‘n win tickets,’ and Earn said, ‘More like scratch ‘n lose.’”
Knickle is a young Islander with no friends, direction, or purpose in his life. When he drives to northern New Brunswick to pick up an acquaintance’s brother from a mental health hospital, the pair make a sudden decision to travel further west to try to find a life amidst the chaos of Upper Canada.
Published by Goose Lane Editions
LONGLISTED FOR THE 2026 GILLER PRIZE
“The Small Ones is a masterfully written, harrowing novel about the child martyrs used as front-line shields in the Iran-Iraq War—'us warrior children, us children of God,’ as our narrator tells us. A wondrous literary novel about a dark moment in history.”
—John Irving
In The Small Ones, Nazanine Hozar crafts a gripping fable about children who are caught up in a military insurgence along the Iran–Iraq border in the early 1980s (based on the real-life conflict of that time) and forced to become soldiers and martyrs.
Published by Penguin Random House Canada
NATIONAL BESTSELLER • In this haunting debut novel, a private tragedy thrusts one family into the court of public opinion as the media—and their own community—dissect every aspect of their lives.
ONE OF THE NEW YORKER’S BEST BOOKS OF 2026 SO FAR • SHORTLISTED FOR THE GILLER PRIZE
Zorah Sharaf could do no wrong. Zorah Sharaf brought shame upon her family.
Published by Penguin Random House Canada
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.
Michelle Good is a Cree writer and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. After working with Indigenous organizations for twenty-five years, she obtained her law degree as a 43-year-old single mom and then spent fourteen years advocating for residential school survivors.
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.
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.
Venue
Isabel Bader Theatre
93 Charles St West, Toronto, ON