Established in 1976, the First Novel Award program has launched the careers of some of Canada’s most beloved novelists. Previous winners include Michael Ondaatje, Joan Barfoot, Joy Kogawa, W. P. Kinsella, Nino Ricci, Rohinton Mistry, Michael Redhill, Mona Awad, Katherena Vermette, Casey Plett, Michelle Good, Pik-Shuen Fung, and last year’s winner, Jasmine Sealy.
The winner of the Adult Novel Category will receive $60,000, and the five finalists will each receive $6,000 in prize money. The Youth Short Story Category invites authors between the ages of thirteen and seventeen to submit a short story under 3,000 words. The winner in this category will receive $5,000 and the five finalists will each receive $500.
2024 Youth Author Special Guest Speaker
David A. Robertson is the author of numerous books for young readers, including the two Governor General’s Literary Award–winning picture books On the Trapline and When We Were Alone, both illustrated by Julie Flett. The first two books in Robertson’s bestselling middle-grade fantasy series, The Misewa Saga, have received great acclaim and award attention. A sought-after speaker and educator, Robertson is a member of the Norway House Cree Nation and lives in Winnipeg, Manitoba.
2024 Judging Panel
Billy-Ray Belcourt
Billy-Ray Belcourt (he/him) is from the Driftpile Cree Nation. His debut novel, A Minor Chorus, was longlisted for the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Amazon First Novel Award. His bestselling memoir, A History of My Brief Body, won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and the Governor General’s Literary Award. He won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize for his debut collection, This Wound Is a World, which was also a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award. Belcourt is an Assistant Professor in the School of Creative Writing at UBC.
Francesca Ekwuyasi
Francesca Ekwuyasi is a is a learner, artist and storyteller born in Lagos, Nigeria. She was awarded the Writers Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers in 2022 for her debut novel Butter Honey Pig Bread (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2020).
Butter Honey Pig Bread was also shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award and longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Dublin Literary Award.
Butter Honey Pig Bread placed second on CBC’s Canada Reads: Canada’s Annual Battle of the Books, where it was selected as one of five contenders in 2021 for “the one book that all of Canada should read.”
Francesca’s writing has appeared in the Malahat Review, Transition Magazine, Room Magazine, Brittle Paper, the Ex-Puritan, C-Magazine, Vol. 1 Brooklyn, Canadian Art, Chatelain and elsewhere. Her short story “Ọrun is Heaven” was longlisted for the 2019 Journey Prize.
She co-authored Curious Sounds: A Dialogue in Three Movements (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2023), a multi-genre collaborative book with Roger Mooking.
Kaie Kellough
Kaie Kellough is a novelist, poet, and sound performer. His work emerges at a crossroads of social engagement and formal experiment. From western Canada, he lives in Montréal and has roots in Guyana, South America.
Magnetic Equator (poetry, McClelland and Stewart 2019) was awarded the 2020 Griffin Poetry prize. His collection of short stories, Dominoes at the Crossroads (Véhicule, 2020), was nominated for multiple national awards, and won the A.M. Klein prize for fiction.
Kaie has written plays for television and librettos for large musical ensembles. His solo and group sound performances have toured internationally.
Souvankham Thammavongsa
Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four poetry books, and the short story collection
How to Pronounce Knife, winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize and Trillium Book Award, and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her stories have won an O. Henry Prize and have appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper’s Magazine, The Atlantic, and Granta.
Photo by Steph Martyniuk.
Past Shortlists and Winners
2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
Get in Touch
For more information please contact us at amazoncanadafirstnovelaward@thewalrus.ca.
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