The Literary Prize I Trust Most Just Announced Its Longlist

And Now My TBR Is Busting At The Seams

Every year, there’s one literary prize announcement that makes me immediately rearrange my TBR.

Not the Booker.
Not the Giller.
Not even the Women’s Prize.

For me, it’s the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and the 2026 longlist has just been announced.

If you want to see me talk through the list, please make sure you watch my reaction video.

Why I am in love with this prize

The Carol Shields Prize is only three years old but it already does something many older prizes have forgotten how to do: surprise readers!

The prize is open to Canadian and American women and non-binary writers and the award deliberately refuses narrow definitions of literary fiction. Novels compete alongside short story collections and graphic novels, debuts hang out with established names and genres overlap freely.

The result is a longlist that feels like a wonderful conversation.

As a Canadian (currently writing from Montreal), I admit I’m predisposed to love this prize but putting this bias aside, it consistently introduces me to books and writers I didn’t even know existed and that’s increasingly rare in an algorithm-driven reading culture.

This year’s jury, chaired by Carmen Maria Machado and featuring Deesha Philyaw and Cherie Dimaline, brings together some of the most exciting writers I’ve heard about in recent years.

The prize also offers one of the largest purses out there - the winner will receive $150,000 USD!

The shortlist will be decided April 21, with the winner announced on June 2.

Let’s get into the longlist

There’s an excitement here, that feeling of encountering writers at the beginning of something rather than celebrating careers already known. One of the most striking things this year is the number of debuts on the list.

Janet Rich Edwards’ “Canticle”, is set in 13th-century Bruges and follows a young woman who refuses an arranged marriage and joins a community of nuns who reject the church. Between latin lessons taken in secret and a tone of defiant medieval feminism, this story feels designed for readers who love historical fiction with a taste for rebellion (which, admittedly, includes me).

Lauren Francis-Sharma’s “Casualties of Truth” seems to combine literary fiction with the propulsion of a thriller, tracing how a dinner party encounter resurrects a buried past running between Washington, D.C., and post-apartheid South Africa. I do love a good revenge story and this one sounds complex - both morally and politically.

And then there’s “The Edge of Water” by Olufunke Grace Bankole, an intergenerational story that takes us from Nigeria to New Orleans, beginning with a prophecy and unfolding through migration, disaster, and memory. It sounds expansive in scope but intimate in emotional focus - “yes, please”.

Amanda Leduc’s “Wildlife” features talking hyenas and broaches theological questions about what separates humans from animals. It seems strange, philosophical, and a bit out of line with the “normal” range for a literary prize.

A graphic novel, “Cannon” by Lee Lai is published by Montreal’s own Drawn & Quarterly and lands comfortably beside other literary heavyweights on this list (Megha Majumdar and Katie Kitamura) reinforcing the prize’s commitment to form as much as to content.

Finally, multiple short story collections appear on the list, including Nina Dunic’s “Suddenly Light”, Julia Elliott’s “Hellions”, and “The Sea Gives Up The Dead” by Molly Olguín. Thus, quietly arguing that short fiction deserves equal cultural attention.

Honestly, probably my favourite aspect of the Carol Shields Prize is that it expands what “serious literature” is allowed to look like.

I’ve read two titles on the list.

Katie Kitamura’s “Audition” which is a novel built around perception and performance. Without giving any spoilers, it’s a book where relationships shift subtly until you realize you may have misunderstood everything (about half way through). I won’t say more because spoilers would genuinely ruin the reading experience, but the title itself is a clue.

Meanwhile, Megha Majumdar’s “A Guardian and a Thief” begins with a stolen purse that holds a family’s travel documents for an upcoming move to America and evolves into a meditation on inequality. The titular thief and guardian’s destinies becoming enmeshed. The prose hasn’t fully won me over (I just didn’t like the writing) but the moral tension between characters was compelling enough to keep me turning pages and by the end, I was choked up with sadness and despair. Sometimes a story can outrun the writing and that can be interesting in its own way.

So what am I running out to get my hands on first?

If I’m honest, my immediate must reads in response to the list are:

• Casualties of Truth

• Canticle

• The Edge of Water

• The Morgue Keeper, a debut by Ruyan Meng rooted in the historical trauma of Maoist China and the aftermath of Tiananmen Square

• and Cannon, which I may attempt to track down at Drawn & Quarterly before it inevitably sells out.

Literary prize season always turns reading into a kind of treasure hunt with availability playing a major role in what I actually get to first, if I get to it at all.

A few final thoughts

Many major literary awards feel increasingly predictable. The same publishers, the same conversations, the same safe definitions of prestige. For instance, there is a reason “Audition” is on this, the Women’s Prize longlist and was on the Booker Prize shortlist…

The Carol Shields Prize just feels different.

Reading its longlist feels like being handed an invitation to a special weekend (or month long) wander around an independent bookstore (or booksellers fair) instead of instructions on what to admire from the critics. Which makes it so exciting.

Which of these books will you pick up first? Are you reading along with any literary prizes this year?

I’ll report back as I work my way through the list (assuming my library holds cooperate) - ;)