Canadian literature is the literature of a multicultural country, written in languages including Canadian English, Canadian French, Indigenous languages, and many others such as Canadian Gaelic. Influences on Canadian writers are broad both geographically and historically, representing Canada's diversity in culture and region.
The Amazon.ca First Novel Award, formerly the Books in Canada First Novel Award, is a Canadian literary award, co-presented by Amazon.ca and The Walrus to the best first novel in English published the previous year by a citizen or resident of Canada. It has been awarded since 1976.
Pauline Holdstock is a British-Canadian novelist, essayist and short fiction writer with a focus on historical fiction. Born and raised in England, she came to Canada in 1974, and resides in Victoria, British Columbia. After a ten-year teaching career in the UK, the Caribbean, and Canada, she wrote her first novel. The Blackbird's Song (1989) launched her professional full-time writing career when it was shortlisted for the Books in Canada/W.H. Smith Best First Novel Award and subsequently reviewed favourably in the UK. She is the author of ten works of fiction and non-fiction in addition to reviews and articles for national newspapers and for websites. Her books have been published in the UK, the US, Portugal, Brazil, Australia and Germany as well as in Canada. Her novel Beyond Measure brought Holdstock's work to a wider audience, being a finalist for both the Giller Prize and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize and winning the BC Book Prizes Ethel Wilson Fiction Award. Her novella The World of Light Were We Live, as yet unpublished in book form, was the winner of the Malahat Review Novella Contest 2006. Into the Heart of the Country, the story of Samuel Hearne's surrender of Prince of Wales Fort, was published in 2011 and longlisted for the Giller Prize. Her most recent novel, The Hunter and the Wild Girl, listed as a best book for 2015 by both the CBC and the National Post, was a finalist for the BC Book Prizes in 2016 and went on to win the City of Victoria Butler Book prize. Holdstock's other literary activities include presentations, sessional teaching, mentoring, adjudicating arts awards and co-producing a literary reading series.
The Governor General's Award for English-language fiction is a Canadian literary award that annually recognizes one Canadian writer for a fiction book written in English. It is one of fourteen Governor General's Awards for Literary Merit, seven each for creators of English- and French-language books. The awards was created by the Canadian Authors Association in partnership with Lord Tweedsmuir in 1936. In 1959, the award became part of the Governor General's Awards program at the Canada Council for the Arts in 1959. The age requirement is 18 and up.
Alison Pick is a Canadian writer. She is most noted for her Booker Prize-nominated novel Far to Go, and was a winner of the Bronwen Wallace Memorial Award for most promising writer in Canada under 35.
Elyse Gasco is a Canadian fiction writer. She is a recipient of the Journey Prize, QSPELL Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction, and the QSPELL/FEWQ First Book Award,
Rawi Hage is a Lebanese-Canadian journalist, novelist, and photographer based in Canada.
The Quebec Writers' Federation Awards are a series of Canadian literary awards, presented annually by the Quebec Writers' Federation to the best works of literature in English by writers from Quebec. They were known from 1988 to 1998 as the QSPELL Awards.
Yann Martel, is a Canadian author who wrote the Man Booker Prize–winning novel Life of Pi, an international bestseller published in more than 50 territories. It has sold more than 12 million copies worldwide and spent more than a year on the bestseller lists of the New York Times and The Globe and Mail, among many other best-selling lists. Life of Pi was adapted for a movie directed by Ang Lee, garnering four Oscars including Best Director and winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Original Score.
Kaie Kellough is a Canadian poet and novelist. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, raised in Calgary, Alberta, and in 1998 moved to Montreal, Quebec, where he lives.
Saleema Nawaz is a Canadian author whose works of short fiction have been published in literary journals such as Prairie Fire, PRISM International, Grain, The Dalhousie Review, and The New Quarterly. Nawaz was born in Ottawa, Ontario and later moved to Winnipeg, Manitoba in order to study English at the University of Manitoba, where she received her M.A. with a creative writing thesis. Her first complete collection of short fiction, entitled Mother Superior, was published by Freehand Books in 2008. Nawaz completed her first novel, Bone and Bread, published by Anansi Press in 2013, while residing in Montreal, Quebec.
Dora Dueck is a Canadian writer. She is the author of three novels, a collection of short fiction, and a collection of essays and memoir. Her second novel, This Hidden Thing, was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and won the McNally Robinson Book of the Year Award at the 2011 Manitoba Book Awards. What You Get at Home, a collection of short stories, was shortlisted for the Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction and the Carol Shields Winnipeg Award at the 2013 Manitoba Book Awards. It won the High Plains Book Award for Short Stories. The Malahat Review, a Canadian literary magazine, awarded its 2014 Novella Prize to her story "Mask". All That Belongs, her third novel, was published in 2019. Her stories and articles have appeared in a variety of journals and on the CBC.
Cormorant Books Inc is a Canadian book publishing company. The company's current publisher is Marc Côté.
Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette is a Canadian novelist, film director, and screenwriter from Quebec. Her films are known for their "organic, participatory feel." Barbeau-Lavalette is the daughter of filmmaker Manon Barbeau and cinematographer Philippe Lavalette, and the granddaughter of artist Marcel Barbeau.
Us Conductors is a debut novel by Canadian writer Sean Michaels. Published in 2014 by Random House in Canada and Tin House in the United States, the novel is a fictionalized account of the relationship between Léon Theremin, the inventor of the theremin, and Clara Rockmore, the musician regarded as the instrument's first virtuoso player.
Susin Nielsen is a Canadian author for children, adolescent and young adults. She received the 2012 Governor General's Award for English-language children's literature and the 2013 Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award for her young adult novel The Reluctant Journal of Henry K. Larsen, which deals with the aftermath of a school shooting.
Geneviève Pettersen is a Canadian writer from Quebec. Her debut novel, La déesse des mouches à feu (2014), was awarded the Grand Prix littéraire Archambault.
Goddess of the Fireflies is a Canadian drama film, directed by Anaïs Barbeau-Lavalette and released in 2020. An adaptation of the novel by Geneviève Pettersen, the film centres on the coming of age of Catherine, a teenage girl living in a small town in Quebec in the early 1990s.
Dimitri Nasrallah is a Lebanese Canadian writer and academic. He is most noted for his 2022 novel Hotline, which was longlisted for the 2022 Giller Prize.
Ian McGillis is a Canadian writer and journalist. He regularly contributes to the Montreal Gazette and previously co-edited the Montreal Review of Books. His works have been shortlisted three times for Quebec Writers' Federation Awards.
