Emma Hooper is a Canadian writer. She is most notable for her 2018 novel Our Homesick Songs, which was named as longlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. [1]
Born and raised in Alberta, Hooper moved to England in 2004 after completing her Bachelor of Arts in music and writing at the University of Alberta. [2] She completed a Master of Arts in creative writing at Bath Spa University before undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy in creative and critical writing at the University of East Anglia, which she completed in 2010. [3] She subsequently taught at Bath Spa University. Her debut novel, Etta and Otto and Russell and James, was published in 2015, [4] and was a shortlisted finalist for the amazon.ca First Novel Award. [5] Our Homesick Songs followed in 2018. [6]
We Should Not Be Afraid of the Sky was longlisted for the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction in 2023. [7] In 2025, Etta and Otto and Russell and James was a finalist for CBC Reads, championed by Michelle Morgan. [8]
She teaches regularly for Arvon, and runs writing courses annually in Spain with the author Samantha Harvey. [9]
The Giller Prize is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English the previous year, after an annual juried competition between publishers who submit entries. The prize was established in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife Doris Giller, a former literary editor at the Toronto Star, and is awarded in November of each year along with a cash reward with the winner being presented by the previous year's winning author.
Russell Claude Smith is a Canadian writer and newspaper columnist. Smith's novels and short stories are mostly set in Toronto, where he lives.
Lisa Moore is a Canadian writer and editor established in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador.
David Bergen is a Canadian novelist. He has published eleven novels and two collections of short stories since 1993 and is currently based in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. His 2005 novel The Time in Between won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and he was a finalist again in 2010 and 2020, making the long list in 2008.
Billie Livingston is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Livingston grew up in Toronto and Vancouver, British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver.
Philip Michael Hensher FRSL is an English novelist, critic and journalist.
Claire Messud is an American/Canadian/French novelist and literature and creative writing professor. She is best known as the author of the novel The Emperor's Children (2006).
Russell Wangersky is a Canadian journalist and writer of creative non-fiction. Born in New Haven, Connecticut, and raised in Canada since the age of three, Wangersky was educated at Acadia University. He has been page editor of The Telegram in St. John's, as well as a columnist and magazine writer.
Heather O'Neill is a Canadian novelist, poet, short story writer, screenwriter and journalist, who published her debut novel, Lullabies for Little Criminals, in 2006. The novel was subsequently selected for the 2007 edition of Canada Reads, where it was championed by singer-songwriter John K. Samson. Lullabies won the competition. The book also won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction and was shortlisted for eight other major awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction and the Governor General's Award and was longlisted for International Dublin Literary Award.
Eleanor Catton is a New Zealand novelist and screenwriter. Born in Canada, Catton moved to New Zealand as a child and grew up in Christchurch. She completed a master's degree in creative writing at the International Institute of Modern Letters. Her award-winning debut novel, The Rehearsal, written as her Master's thesis, was published in 2008, and has been adapted into a 2016 film of the same name. Her second novel, The Luminaries, won the 2013 Booker Prize, making Catton the youngest author ever to win the prize and only the second New Zealander. It was subsequently adapted into a television miniseries, with Catton as screenwriter. In 2023, she was named on the Granta Best of Young British Novelists list.
Samantha Harvey is an English novelist. She won the 2024 Booker Prize for her novel Orbital, which drew on conventions from multiple genres and fields, including literary fiction, science fiction, and philosophy.
Kathy Page is a British-Canadian writer.
Kim Thúy Ly Thanh, CM CQ is a Vietnamese-born Canadian writer. Kim Thúy was born in Vietnam in 1968. At the age of 10 she left Vietnam along with a wave of refugees commonly referred to in the media as “the boat people” and settled with her family in Quebec, Canada. A graduate in translation and law, she has worked as a seamstress, interpreter, lawyer, and restaurant owner. The author has received many awards, including the Governor General’s Literary Award in 2010, and was one of the top 4 finalists of the Alternative Nobel Prize in 2018. Her books have sold more than 850,000 copies around the world and have been translated into 31 languages and distributed across 43 countries and territories. Kim Thúy lives in Montreal where she devotes her time to writing.
Alix Ohlin is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. She was born and raised in Montreal, Quebec, and lives in Vancouver, British Columbia. She is a recipient of the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Bisexual Literature for her short story collection, We Want What We Want.
Marjorie Celona is an American-Canadian writer. Their debut novel, Y, published in 2012, won the Waterstones 11 literary prize and was a shortlisted nominee for the Center for Fiction's Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize, the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and a longlisted nominee for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Alix Hawley is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. Her novel, All True Not a Lie In It, won the amazon.ca First Novel Award in 2015.
Casey Plett is a Canadian writer, best known for her novel Little Fish, her Lambda Literary Award winning short story collection, A Safe Girl to Love, and her Giller Prize-nominated short story collection, A Dream of a Woman. Plett is a transgender woman, and she often centers this experience in her writing.
We'll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night is a novel by Canadian writer Joel Thomas Hynes, published in 2017 by Harper Perennial. It won the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction at the 2017 Governor General's Awards and the Winterset Award, and was longlisted for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Split Tooth is a 2018 novel by Canadian musician Tanya Tagaq. Based in part on her own personal journals, the book tells the story of a young Inuk woman growing up in the Canadian Arctic in the 1970s.
Sarah Bernstein is a Canadian writer and scholar. She was born in Montreal, Quebec, and now lives in Scotland where she teaches literature and creative writing. She has taught at the universities of Sheffield, Edinburgh and Strathclyde.