Fourteen books have been longlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize. The $100,000 award annually recognizes the best in Canadian fiction.
The 2026 longlist is comprised of all novels, covering a wide range of topics, from witch hunting in the 17th century to a grieving mother’s decision to work at a funeral home.
This year’s longlist features four debut novelists: Jennifer Chevalier for The Winter Witch, Patricia Finn for The Golden Boy, Hollay Ghadery for The Unravelling of Ou and Patmeena Sabit for Good People.
It also includes five authors who have previously been recognized by the Giller Prize. Patrick deWitt, longlisted this year for Dodge City, has been shortlisted two times and longlisted once. Michelle Good, recognized for Eliza Sunshine, made the longlist in 2020 for Five Little Indians. Wayne Johnston, who’s on the list for The Novice of Halloway Hall, was shortlisted for The Colony of Unrequited Dreams in 1998. Colin McAdam is longlisted for Daphnis and Chloe and previously was shortlisted for the novel, Fall. Cordelia Strube made this year’s longlist for At Sea in a Sieve and was longlisted in 2010 for her novel Lemon.
Strube also has connections to the CBC Literary Prizes. She won the 1986 prize for her radio drama, Mortal. The CBC Short Story Prize is now open for submissions.
Here is the complete 2026 Giller Prize longlist:
- The Winter Witch by Jennifer Chevalier
- Dodge City by Patrick deWitt
- The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn
- Wild People Quiet by Tara Gereaux
- The Unravelling of Ou by Hollay Ghadery
- Eliza Sunshine by Michelle Good
- Your Breath in Charcoal by Nicholas Herring
- The Small Ones by Nazanine Hozar
- The Novice of Holloway Hall by Wayne Johnston
- Daphnis and Chloe by Colin McAdam
- Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen
- Riverwork by Lisa Robertson
- Good People by Patmeena Sabit
- At Sea in a Sieve by Cordelia Strube
The longlist was chosen by a jury made up of independent booksellers from across the country: Dan Macdonald and Lori Cheverie of the Maritimes’ Bookmark, Danielle and Rupert McNally from Toronto’s Ben McNally Books, Sarah Klassen from Mosaic Books in B.C., Chris Hall of McNally Robinson Booksellers in Winnipeg, Jenn Baerg Steyn of Yellowknife Books, Sean Liburd of Knowledge Bookstore in Brampton, Ont., and Carmela Vedar of The Book Wardrobe in Mississauga, Ont.
The 2026 shortlist will be announced on Oct. 5 and the winner will be announced on Nov. 16.
The 2026 Giller Prize award ceremony will be broadcast on Monday, Nov. 16, at 9 p.m. ET (11:30 p.m. AT, 12 a.m. NT) on CBC TV and CBC Gem, with a livestream also available at 9 p.m. ET on CBC’s YouTube channel. It will also be broadcast on CBC Radio One and CBC Listen.
After a few years of controversy surrounding the prize’s funding, the Giller Prize cut ties with its former sponsor, Scotiabank, in February 2025. The Giller Prize will now be supported by a recent multi-year gift of $4 million from the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation.
Last year’s winner was Souvankham Thammavongsa for Pick a Colour.
Other past winners include Anne Michaels for Held, Sarah Bernstein for Study for Obedience, Suzette Mayr for The Sleeping Car Porter, Esi Edugyan for Washington Black, Michael Redhill for Bellevue Square, Margaret Atwood for Alias Grace, Mordecai Richler for Barney’s Version and Madeleine Thien for Do Not Say We Have Nothing.
You can learn more about the 14 longlisted books below.
The Winter Witch by Jennifer Chevalier
In The Winter Witch, two sisters, Élisabeth and Marthe, make a reluctant journey from Normandy, France to Quebec in the 17th century, after a scandal makes them ineligible for marriage in their home village. Élisabeth is convinced that coming to Montreal, the holiest place on Earth, will help free her from the curse she’s certain lives inside her. But when she’s unsuccessful, Marthe suggests she turn to Jeanne Roy, thought to be a powerful witch, for help instead.
Chevalier is the showrunner of The House, CBC Radio’s political show. She lives in Ottawa. The Winter Witch is her first novel.
Dodge City by Patrick deWitt
Dodge City is a novel set in 1967 featuring 23-year-old Lee Clarke who gets a draft notice to fight in the Vietnam War. Though he doesn’t want to leave the U.S., he also doesn’t want to go to war, so he decides to drive up to Canada, fuelled by amphetamines, to dodge the draft. Along the way, he meets with each member of his dysfunctional family and says goodbye to his birth country.
deWitt is the author of books including The Sisters Brothers, which won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction, the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Leacock Medal for Humour, and The Librarianist, which won the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour. Born in B.C., he now lives in Portland, Ore.
The Golden Boy by Patricia Finn
The Golden Boy is a novel about a Canadian who loses a high-profile television job in the United States and hides away in Maui to rewrite the past. A year in, he receives a mysterious letter, drawing him from his reclusive hideaway and into a new adventure.
Finn is a writer and editor who lives in Vancouver. She has worked for production companies in Canada and New Zealand, including CBC and Television New Zealand.
Wild People Quiet by Tara Gereaux
In Wild People Quiet, set in Saskatchewan in the 1940s, a Métis woman named Florence is hiding her true identity while living in a primarily white town, dyeing her hair blonde and doing what she can to blend in. When she meets a group of Métis farm workers in town for the season, she’s forced to come to terms with her hidden past and must decide how she wants to move forward.
Gereaux, a citizen of the Metis Nation-Saskatchewan, lives in Regina. She is also the author of Saltus and Size of a Fist.
The Unravelling of Ou by Hollay Ghadery
In The Unravelling of Ou, Minoo has to decide between her constant companion, a sock puppet named Ecology Paul, and her relationships with her daughter and newborn granddaughter. On the way home from the hospital, Ecology Paul tells how Minoo got to this point. It’s the story of a young Iranian woman exiled to Canada due to teen pregnancy who finds solace in a sock puppet that helps her feel seen.
Ghadery is an Iranian Canadian writer and radio host based in rural Ontario. She is also the author of the memoir Fuse.
Eliza Sunshine by Michelle Good
Eliza Sunshine is a family saga following three generations of Cree women: Eliza Sunshine, her Nôhkom, Swan, and her daughter, Ella. As the three of them face suffering and adversity in different ways, from violent contact with settlers to residential school, they stay grounded in telling their stories and staying true to themselves, while recognizing that freedom doesn’t have the same meaning to everyone.
Good is a Cree author and a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Her debut novel, Five Little Indians, won Canada Reads 2022, when it was championed by fashion journalist Christian Allaire. It also won the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction, the Amazon First Novel Award and the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. Good is also the author of the nonfiction book Truth Telling.
Your Breath in Charcoal by Nicholas Herring
In Your Breath in Charcoal, Knickle, an Islander with no direction, is tasked with picking up an acquaintance’s brother from a mental health hospital in northern New Brunswick. When he gets there, the two decide to take this opportunity to go west and see if they can make a life in the big city of Toronto.
Herring is an author, fisherman and carpenter based in Murray Harbour, P.E.I. His debut novel, Some Hellish, won the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
The Small Ones by Nazanine Hozar
The Small Ones is a novel about a group of boys and one small girl who are forced to become soldiers in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. The ragtag bunch find friendship and community in each other, even as they desperately hope to return home and back to safety.
Hozar is also the author of the novel Aria. She lives in Vancouver and teaches at Simon Fraser University.
The Novice of Holloway Hall by Wayne Johnston
In The Novice of Holloway Hall, Vivvy finds herself back at her family’s Newfoundland mansion after eight years at a convent in which she failed at becoming a nun. Despite being the biggest private dwelling in Newfoundland, Holloway Hall is empty except for Vivvy’s doctor sister and a five-year-old child who came back with her from Congo, where she was a missionary. As her sister works long hours, Vivvy is tasked with caring for the child, and she begins to worry that there is something seriously wrong going on.
Johnston is the author of 12 novels, including the novel The Colony of Unrequited Dreams, and the memoirs Baltimore’s Mansion and Jennie’s Boy. Originally from Newfoundland, Johnston lives in Toronto.
Daphnis and Chloe by Colin McAdam
In Daphnis and Chloe, friends Frank and Charlie work together at a garage on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. They both fall in love with women and marry them, but are unable to have children. When they happen upon two abandoned babies, they name them Daphnis and Chloe, and a modern retelling of the classic Greek romance ensues.
McAdam is also the author of A Beautiful Truth, which won the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, Some Great Thing, which won the Amazon First Novel Award, and Fall, which won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennon Prize. He lives in Chelsea, Que.
Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead by Mai Nguyen
In Cleo Dang Would Rather Be Dead, Cleo is dealing with the grief of losing her baby daughter. Forced to quit her corporate job and finding every day a battle, she takes a job at the local funeral home on a whim. There, she’s surrounded by a colourful cast of characters who help her acknowledge her feelings and come back into herself.
Nguyen in a Vietnamese Canadian writer based in Toronto. She is also the author of the novel Sunshine Nails.
Riverwork by Lisa Robertson
In Riverwork, Lucy is working as a cleaner for Paris academics when she learns of an ancient river called the Bièvre under the streets of the city. She’s inherited notebooks from her great-aunt, an academic who disappeared years earlier, about the history of the river, finding similarities between her own life and that of the river’s laundresses. In the stolen moments between cleaning shifts, she writes and researches, developing an understanding of the power of recovering things that were lost.
Robertson is a poet, essayist and translator. Her books include the novel The Baudelaire Fractal, the poetry book Boat, and the essay collections Nilling and Occasional Work and Seven Walks from the Office for Soft Architecture. Born in Toronto, she now lives in France.
Good People by Patmeena Sabit
Good People is a novel that follows the Sharaf family, who have finally achieved the American dream. They arrived years ago as refugees and worked hard to live in the fancy neighbourhood and send their kids to the best schools. But when a horrific tragedy befalls the family, people begin to wonder what is actually happening behind closed doors.
Sabit is an author born in Kabul who currently lives in Toronto. Good People is her debut novel.
At Sea in a Sieve by Cordelia Strube
In At Sea in a Sieve, Ray is a single mother and supreme court judge who seems to have everything under control. But when her wayward younger brother waltzes back into her life, along with her irresistible ex, her carefully constructed life of predictability is no longer. Can she embrace the messiness and learn to feel everything to its fullest?
Strube has written 11 books, including On the Shores of Darkness There Is Light, which won the City of Toronto Book Award. Strube lives between Toronto and Yarker, Ont.