Dennis E. Bolen | Dundurn Press
From the jury:
Amaranthine Chevrolet, a young teen takes a cross-country trip: a gentle coming-of-age story soon becomes a quest of mythic proportions. Robin crosses much of Canada in a lovingly restored vehicle, and as we ride with him, we witness the adventures that offer Robin insight into the human experience. He navigates the love and the violence, the humour and the fear, and the tenderness and the faith he sees in the people he encounters, just as he navigates the dangers of the road and the risks of driving underage.
Dennis E. Bolen’s prose is calm and quiet, each sentence unfurling with a lyric beauty. With an eye for detail and a strong sense of structure, Bolen creates an atmospheric novel in which Robin’s voice is wholly convincing. Ultimately, Robin reaches a meaningful conclusion to both his inner and outer journeys.
Tracy Lindberg | Harper Collins
From the jury:
The Cree Word for Love is a testament to all love in its rawest forms. Honest and vulnerable, Tracey Lindberg’s stories, accompanied by George Littlechild’s art, depict loss, hurt, resilience, and forgiveness through the lives of characters who are vibrant, scrappy, and awake to wonder. The rhythm of the seasons— spring, summer, fall, winter— shapes the flow of the book, with each story honouring the natural phases and cycles of love.
Her voice is deeply personal, her language dynamic, and her authorial presence and imagination on technicolour display. Her words cast a spell that holds the reader in suspense from beginning to end. Beautiful, painful, and not without humour and surprises, this book both illuminates the shadow sides of love and welcomes us into its bright and magical spectrum.
Terence Young | Signature Editions
From the jury: In Give Us This Day, Terence Young deftly illuminates the wondrous intricacies of ordinary humans moving through the complicated landscape of life on earth. What plays out in the worlds of these stories—be it arson, a liquor run, an ocean cold plunge, an unwanted guest showing up to dinner—reveals love, grief, trauma, and all the inner workings of characters who, like us, carry the burden of the past into the present. In language awake to the senses, Young writes his flawed and complicated characters with deep compassion and empathy, tenderness and humour. His prose is clean and restrained, his sentences tuned with a poet’s ear for music. These are literary stories in the best sense, driven by characters so full of quirks and hurts, regrets and longings, they hold a shining mirror to our own lives.
Marilyn Bowering: More Richly in Earth; A Poet’s Search for Mary MacLeod
Sarah Cox: Signs of Life: Field Notes from the Frontlines of Extinction
Barbara Black: Little Fortified Stories – WINNER
Ali Blythe: Stedfast
Arleen Paré : Absence of Wings
Shō Yamagushiku : Shima
Tim Lilburn : Numinous Seditions: Interiority and Climate Change
Kathryn Mockler: Anecdotes – WINNER
Maleea Acker for Hesitating Once to Feel Glory
Robert Amos for E.J. Hughes: Canadian War Artist
Mary Bomford for Red Dust and Cicada Songs
Pauline Holdstock for Confessions with Keith – WINNER
Arleen Paré: First
Esi Edugyan: Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling – WINNER
Barry Gough: Possessing Meares Island: A Historian’s Journey into the Past of Clayoquot Sound
Amanda Swinimer: The Science and Spirit of Seaweed: Discovering Food, Medicine and Purpose in the Kelp Forests of the Pacific Northwest
Gregor Craigie: On Borrowed Time: North America’s Next Big Quake
Teoni Spathelfer: White Raven
Grant Buday for Orphans of Empire
Lorna Crozier for Through the Garden: A Love Story (with Cats)
Briony Penn with Cecil Paul for Following the Good River: The Life and Times of Wa’xai – WINNER
Kyeren Regehr for Cult Life
Madeline Sonik for Fontainebleau
Lorna Crozier : The House the Spirit Builds – WINNER
Carla Funk: Every Little Scrap and Wonder: A Small-Town Childhood
Christin Geall: Cultivated: The Elements of Floral Style
Carey Newman & Kirstie Hudson Picking Up the Pieces: Residential School Memories and the Making of the Witness Blanket
Steven Price: Lampedusa
Robert Amos: EJ Hughes Paints Vancouver Isaland
Lorna Crozier : God of Shadows
Esi Edugyan: Washington Black
Darrel McLeod: Mamaskatch
Kathy Page: Dear Evelyn – WINNER
Lorna Crozier: What the Soul Doesn’t Want
Patrick Friesen: Songen
Rhonda Ganz: Frequent small loads of laundry
Bill Gaston: A Mariner’s guide to Self Sabotage – WINNER
Marie Tippett: Sculpture in Canada
M.A.C Farrant: The Days
Kevin Patterson: News from the Red Desert
Steven Price: By Gaslight
Yasuko Thanh: Mysterious Fragance of the Yellow Mountains – WINNER
Patricia Young: Short Takes on the Apocalypse
Frances Backhouse: Once they were hats
Tricia Dower: Becoming Lin
Pauline Holdstock: The Hunter and the wild girl – WINNER
Laura Trunkey: Double Dutch
Nancy Turner: Ancient Pathways, Ancestral Knowledge
Grant Buday: The Delusionist
Arleen Pare: Lake of Two Mountains
Karen Enns: Ordinary Hours
Julie Paul: The pull of the moon
Dede Crane: Every Happy Family
Michael Layland: The land of Heart’s Delight
Audrey Thomas: Local Customs
Catherine Greenwood: Lost Letters
M.A.C. Farrant: The World Afloat – WINNER
Stephen Reid: A Crowbar in the Buddhist Garden – WINNER
C.P. Boyko: Psychology and Other Stories
Christina Johnson-Dean: The life and art of Ina D.D. Uhthoff
Lorna Crozier: The Book of Marvels, Compendium of Everyday Things
Bill Gaston: The World
William Deverell : I”ll see you in my dreams
Mark Zuehlke: Breakout from Juno
Fisher et al: All the Dirt: Reflections on Organic Farming
Madeline Sonik: Afflictions and Departures – WINNER
Esi Edugyan: Half Blood Blues
Stephen Hume: A walk with the rainy sisters
John Schreiber: Old Lives
Jack Hodgins: The Master of Happy Endings – WINNER
Sylvia Olsen: Working with Wool
Carla Funk: Apologetic
Frances Backhouse: Children of the Klondike – WINNER
M.A.C. Farrant: The Secret lives of Litterbugs
Eve Joseph: THe secret signature of things
Jay Ruzesky: Wolsenburg Clock
Deborah Willis: Vanishing and other stories
Dede Crane: The cult of quick repair
Patrick Lane: Red Dog Red Dog – WINNER
David Leach: Fatal Tide: When the race of a lifetime goes wrong
Ilana Stanger Ross: Sima’s Undergarments for Women
Joanne Dionne: Little Emperors
Arleen Pare: Paper Trail – Winner
Mark Zuehlke: Terrible Victory
Bill Gaston: Gargoyles – WINNER
PK Page: Hand Luggage
Patricia Young: Airstream
Terence Young: Moving Day
Mark Zuehlke: For Honour’s Sake
Daryl Ashby: John Muir West Coast Pioneer
Dede Crane: Sympathy
Mitchell Parry: Tacoma Narrows
Pamela Porter: Crazy Man
Mark Zuehlke: Holding Juno -WINNER
Terence Young: After Goodlakes – WINNER
Kevin Patterson: Country of Cold – WINNER
The Victoria Book Prize Society acknowledges that we live and work on the traditional territories of many First Nations, including but not limited to BOḰEĆEN (Pauquachin), MÁLEXEȽ (Malahat), P’a:chi:da?aht (Pacheedaht), Pune’laxutth’ (Penelekut), Sc’ianew (Cheanuh), Songhees, SȾÁUTW̱ (Tsawout), T’Sou-ke, W̱JOȽEȽP (Tsartlip), W̱SIKEM (Tseycum), and xʷsepsəm (Esquimalt).
As an organization dedicated to celebrating story, we honour the first storytellers of these lands and commit to an ongoing process of listening and learning.
©2026 Victoria Book Prizes. All rights reserved
