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DECADENCE a finalist for the 2026 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction!

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Biblioasis is thrilled to share that Decadence by Richard Kelly Kemick has been announced as a finalist for the 2026 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction! You can check out all five finalists here. 

The 2026 jury citation reads:

“Richard Kelly Kemick’s Decadence provides a narrative about interiority that is funny, curious, self-deprecating, and occasionally and gloriously ridiculous. Beneath Kemick’s wit and (truly) random obsessions is an exceptionally attentive meditation about the emotional weight of quotidian life and the strange difficulty of becoming an adult. Across a range of explorations about love, grief, loneliness, failure, family, and self-worth, Kemick is refreshingly honest about the limits of introspection, even as he offers an elaborate examination of his own catalogue of shortcomings. The result of this ‘accidental memoir of a sort’ is a deeply genuine, anxiously original, and immensely enjoyable portrait of life in progress.”

The Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction was first awarded in 1997. It is given annually for excellence in the category of literary nonfiction, which includes essays, history, biography, memoir, commentary, and criticism. Each finalist is awarded $5,000, and the winner receives a prize purse of $75,000. The award was first sponsored in 2011 by the Irish-Canadian businesswoman, philanthropist and writer who served as lieutenant-governor of Ontario. She died last year at 83. The prize is now funded by the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation. The winner will be announced at the Writers’ Trust Awards on Tuesday, November 10.

Get your copy of Decadence here!

Or, preorder our Limited Edition of the book here!

ABOUT DECADENCE

Finalist for the 2026 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction

“The genre of memoir is bullshit (as I humbly posit). No one actually lives like they are moving along some grand Freytag’s triangle. Rather, we live within isolated instances, specific struggles and victories, which, when compiled, form a narrative.”—Richard Kelly Kemick

In Decadence, Richard Kelly Kemick’s “accidental memoir of a sort,” the author ranges widely through his myriad preoccupations and obsessions—volleyball, municipal landfills, dogs, high school plays, Christmas villages, love—out of which the shape of a unique sensibility is revealed. Reminiscent of the three Davids—Rakoff, Sedaris, and Wallace—these essays accrete into a portrait of a man trying to make sense of a world in which there are no goddamn rules; and yet one in which every action has sometimes profound consequences. A book of intelligence and care and kindness and humour and yearning and the occasional epiphany, Decadence gathers up from the odds and ends of living what makes a modern life—quiet and desperate as it may at times be—worth celebrating.

ABOUT RICHARD KELLY KEMICK

Richard Kelly Kemick is an award-winning poet, journalist, and fiction writer. His debut collection of short stories, Hello, Horse, was published by Biblioasis in 2024. He is also the author of I Am Herod (available on audiobook), the poetry collection Caribou Run, and the stage play Amor De Cosmos: A Delusional Musical. Richard’s limited series podcast, Natural Life, is an intimate and unexpectedly honest documentary on his cousin, who is serving a life sentence without parole in Michigan.

DAPHNIS AND CHLOE longlisted for the Giller Prize!

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Biblioasis is thrilled to share that Colin McAdam’s Daphnis and Chloe has been longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize! The longlist of fourteen works was selected for the first time by a jury panel of independent booksellers, and was announced this morning on September 8. View the full list here.

In a statement, Biblioasis publisher Dan Wells writes,

All of us here at Biblioasis are thrilled that Colin McAdam’s Daphnis and Chloe has been nominated for the Giller Prize. Our thanks to the jurors—independent booksellers, naturally—and to the Giller itself for recognizing the strengths of Colin’s book. Daphnis and Chloe is a book quite unlike anything else in Colin’s ouevre, and from anything else we’ve published here at Biblioasis, a hopeful book about the power of love and beauty and storytelling to create a light in the darkness, and it has as broad an appeal as anything we’ve published. We’re grateful that this nomination will help bring Colin’s gem to a wider readership.

The Giller Prize is awarded annually to a Canadian novel or short story collection published that year. The winner receives $100,000 and the shortlisted authors each receive $10,000. The 2026 shortlist will be announced on Monday, October 5, and the winner will be announced at an award ceremony on Monday, November 16 in Toronto.

Pick up your copy of Daphnis and Chloe here.

And don’t miss our Limited Edition of the book here!

ABOUT DAPHNIS AND CHLOE

Longlisted for the 2026 Giller Prize • A 2026 CIBA Booksellers’ List Selection • One of Lit Hub’s Most Anticipated Books of 2026

A fable about love and innocence and beauty, and finding a light through the darkness.

There’s a city on an island in the Pacific that can only be reached by ferry, a city where a mechanic named Frank opens a garage with his old friend Charlie. Both men marry the women they love but are unable to have children. There are drugs on the streets of this city that take away pain for strings of minutes and bring synthetic rapture; and by these streets the couples are given two babies, abandoned under strange circumstances. The boy they name Daphnis, and the girl Chloe.

And so begins a book unlike anything else, a modern retelling of an ancient story. Part Ovid and part True Romance, and narrated by Eros himself, Daphnis and Chloe offers a pulpy meditation on love and beauty, on people triumphing over darkness by wrestling deep within it, on the solace of art, and on the simple but profound pleasure provided to a blind old man as he holds his wife’s hand and listens to an increasingly familiar story.

ABOUT COLIN MCADAM

Colin McAdam is an internationally acclaimed novelist with a PhD from Cambridge on translations of Ancient Greek—the original language of Daphnis and Chloe. He has written non-fiction for Harpers, Granta, Salon, and Hazlitt, among other journals, and his novels have won or been shortlisted for several prizes including the Amazon Best First Novel Award, the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Prize, the Governor General’s Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize, and the Giller Prize. He lives in Quebec.

ON BOOK BANNING and ON OIL finalists for the 2026 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize!

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Biblioasis is thrilled to share that this morning on Wednesday, March 18, the Writers’ Trust announced their finalists for the 2026 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, which included both On Book Banning by Ira Wells and On Oil by Don Gillmor!

About On Book Banning, the jury wrote:

“Ira Wells offers direct and incisive writing that brings suppressed voices into the light and challenges readers to question the moral authority of censorship. Refusing both academic detachment and easy provocation, Wells presents rigorous research with clarity and balance, pairing the ridiculous with the brilliant. His work is passionate and compassionate, inviting sustained reflection on freedom, responsibility, and the imperfect humanity behind all writing, and leaving readers with a deeper, more self-aware engagement with literature.”

About On Oil, the jury wrote:

“At once a memoir, a meditation, and a polemic, Don Gillmor drills deep into one of Canada’s most controversial natural resources in On Oil. Drawing on his experience as a roughneck during the 1970s Alberta oil boom, he explores the central role the petroleum industry plays in Canadian politics and business. Stories from Gillmor’s life on the rig ground his examination of the ongoing tension between oil as a driver of prosperity and values held by many other Canadians. With humour and polite insistence, Gillmor asks the questions that are at the heart of Canada’s relationship with its resource bounty.”

The two books are part of the Biblioasis Field Notes series, which explores timely issues of public interest and features writers and thinkers from a range of disciplines: philosophy, public policy, history, economics, cultural criticism, and more.

The annual $40,000 prize, now in its 26th year, recognizes literary nonfiction about a political subject that is relevant to Canadian readers. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced in Ottawa at the Politics and the Pen gala on April 29.

Grab a copy of On Book Banning here!

Grab a copy of On Oil here!

ABOUT ON BOOK BANNING

A Finalist for the 2026 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing • A Winnipeg Free Press Best Book of 2025

The freedom to read is under attack.

From the destruction of libraries in ancient Rome to today’s state-sponsored efforts to suppress LGBTQ+ literature, book bans arise from the impulse toward social control. In a survey of legal cases, literary controversies, and philosophical arguments, Ira Wells illustrates the historical opposition to the freedom to read and argues that today’s conservatives and progressives alike are warping our children’s relationship with literature and teaching them that the solution to opposing viewpoints is outright expurgation. At a moment in which our democratic institutions are buckling under the stress of polarization, On Book Banning is both rallying cry and guide to resistance for those who will always insist upon reading for themselves.

ABOUT IRA WELLS

Ira Wells is a critic, essayist, and an associate professor at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where he teaches in the Northrop Frye stream in literature and the humanities in the Vic One program. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Globe and Mail, Guardian, The New Republic, and many other venues. His most recent book is Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.

ABOUT ON OIL

A Finalist for the 2026 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

A journalist, and former roughneck, considers our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil.

Oil has dominated our lives for the last century. It has given us warmth, progress, and life-threatening pollution. It has been a gift and is now a threat. It has started wars, ended wars, and infiltrated governments—in some cases, effectively become the government. And now oil’s enduring mythology is facing a messy, complicated twilight.

In On Oil, Don Gillmor, who worked as a roughneck on oil rigs during the seventies oil boom in Alberta, looks at how the industry has changed over the decades and illustrates the ways our dependence on oil has led to regulatory capture, in Canada and elsewhere, and contributed to armed conflict and war across the world. Gillmor documents the myriad ways that oil companies have misdirected environmental action and misinformed the public about climate concerns and illuminates where we went wrong—and how we might yet change course.

ABOUT DON GILLMOR

Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of five novels, Cherry Beach, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata; a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History; and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.

BENBECULA longlisted for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction

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We’re excited to share that Benbecula by Graeme Macrae Burnet is one of the twelve books longlisted for the 2026 Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction! The announcement was made today, February 5, and you can view the full longlist on their website here.

Grab a copy of Benbecula here.

The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction is one of the most prestigious literary prizes in the world. Now in its sixteenth year, the Prize is unique for rewarding writing of exceptional quality in books first published in the UK, Ireland, or the Commonwealth, and set at least 60 years in the past.

The Prize was founded in 2009, and is traditionally awarded at the Borders Book Festival in Melrose, Scotland, in June every year. The winner receives £25,000 and shortlisted authors each receive £1,500. The Prize is managed by The Abbotsford Trust, the independent Scottish Charity responsible for Sir Walter Scott’s extraordinary Borders home, and is supported by Hawthornden Foundation and the Buccleuch Living Heritage Trust.

ABOUT BENBECULA

Booker-nominated Graeme Macrae Burnet returns to the historic Scotland of His Bloody Project to tell the multi-layered story of madness and murder in the MacPhee family.

During the summer of 1857 on the distant Scottish island of Benbecula, Angus MacPhee, returning from a fortnight’s work at a house a few miles away, seems to have lost his mind, forcing his family to keep him shackled to his bed. When he is finally allowed to go at large, his erratic behaviour leads to the conviction that he should be committed to an asylum.

Five years later, Malcolm MacPhee is living alone in the house where his brother’s madness led to horrifying ends. Isolated, ostracised by his small community, Malcolm is haunted, the stench of his brother’s crimes lingering as the reek cleaves to the thatch. Is he afflicted by the same madness? And to where has his sister Marion disappeared?

Drawing on letters, asylum records, and witness statements, Graeme Macrae Burnet returns to the historic Scotland of His Bloody Project to construct a beguilingly layered narrative about madness, murder, and the uncertain nature of the self.

ABOUT GRAEME MACRAE BURNET

Graeme Macrae Burnet is the author of six novels: the Booker-shortlisted His Bloody Project, which has been published in over twenty languages; the Booker-longlisted Case Study (named as one of the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of 2022); Benbecula; and the Georges Gorski trilogy, comprising The Disappearance of Adèle Bedeau, The Accident on the A35, and A Case of Matricide. Graeme was born in Kilmarnock and now lives in Glasgow.

Mark Bourrie wins the 2025 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media: The Pierre Berton Award

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We’re thrilled to share that Mark Bourrie, author of titles including the RBC Taylor Prize-winning Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson and Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia, has been recognized with the 2025 Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media: The Pierre Berton Award.

View the recipients’ announcement on the Canada’s History website here.

Check out Mark Bourrie’s books here.

Photo: Mark Bourrie (courtesy Canada’s National History Society)

Mark Bourrie is an Ottawa-based author, lawyer, and journalist. He holds a master’s in journalism from Carleton University and a PhD in history from the University of Ottawa. In 2017, he was awarded a Juris Doctor degree and was called to the bar in 2018. He has won numerous awards for his journalism, including a National Magazine Award, and received the RBC Charles Taylor Prize in 2020 for his book Bush Runner: The Adventures of Pierre-Esprit Radisson. His most recent books include Big Men Fear Me: The Fast Life and Quick Death of Canada’s Most Powerful Media Mogul, the national bestseller Crosses in the Sky: Jean de Brébeuf and the Destruction of Huronia, and Ripper: The Making of Pierre Poilievre.

The Governor General’s History Award for Popular Media: the Pierre Berton Award recognizes individuals who have helped increase understanding of Canadian history through popular media, including but not limited to publications, film, radio, television, theatre, or digital media platforms. The $5,000 Pierre Berton Award, as it is also known, is administered by Canada’s National History Society, with the support of the Government of Canada through the Department of Canadian Heritage, and Power Corporation of Canada.

In their press release, president and CEO of Canada’s History Society Melony Ward praises,

“Mark Bourrie makes our country’s history as vivid as anything happening today. He embraces the complexity of the past to create works that brim with conflict, struggle, and larger-than-life characters, all firmly grounded in research.”

The eleven recipients being honoured by this year’s history awards, will receive their awards from Governor General Mary Simon at an upcoming ceremony in Ottawa.

A huge congratulations from all of us at Biblioasis to Mark!

NEAR DISTANCE shortlisted for the NBCC 2025 Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize!

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We’re thrilled to share that today, the National Book Critics Circle Award announced their finalists for the 2025 Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, which includes Wendy H. Gabrielsen’s translation of Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg! View the full list of finalists on their website, here.

Grab a copy of Near Distance here!

As judge Mandana Chaffa describes, the Barrios shortlist features “remarkable books by notable authors, which are only available to English readers because of the gifted translators and committed publishers who bring them to life.”

The NBCC’s Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, launched in 2022, seeks to highlight the artistic merit of literature in translation and recognize translators’ valuable work, which expands and enriches American literary culture by bringing world literature to English-language readers. The prize honors the best book of any genre translated into English and published in the United States.

A finalists reading will be be held on March 25, 2026; the awards ceremony and reception will be on March 26, and is open to the public.

ABOUT NEAR DISTANCE

A Finalist for the 2025 Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize

For her entire life, Karin has fled anything and anyone that tries to possess her. Her job demands little, she mostly socializes with men she meets online, and she’s rarely in touch with Helene, her adult daughter. But when Helene’s marriage is threatened, she turns, uncharacteristically, to her mother for commiseration, and a long weekend away in London. As the two women embark on their uneasy companionship, Karin’s past, and the origins of her studied detachments, are cast in a new light, and she can no longer ignore their effects—on not only herself and her own relationships, but on her daughter’s as well.

An unnerving, closely observed study of character—and the choices we do and do not make—Near Distance introduces Hanna Stoltenberg as a writer of piercing insight and startling lucidity.

ABOUT WENDY H. GABRIELSEN

Wendy Harrison Gabrielsen moved to Oslo in 1987 after completing an MA in Translation at the University of Surrey. She has translated works of fiction as well as nonfiction, and in 2022 she was awarded the Wigeland Prize by the American-Scandinavian Foundation for an excerpt from her translation of Hanna Stoltenberg’s Near Distance.

ABOUT HANNA STOLTENBERG

Hanna Stoltenberg (born 1989) grew up in Oslo and studied English at the University of Bristol. She is a regular contributor to the Norwegian literary journal Vinduet and works as an editor at the Munch museum. Her first novel, Near Distance (Nada in Norwegian) was published in 2019. It won the prestigious Tarjei Vesaas first book award and the NATT&DAG Oslo prize for best literary work. She is currently working on her second novel.

NEAR DISTANCE longlisted for the NBCC 2025 Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize

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We’re thrilled to share that today, the National Book Critics Circle Award announced their longlist for the 2025 Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, which includes Wendy H. Gabrielsen’s translation of Near Distance by Hanna Stoltenberg! View the full longlist on their website, here.

Grab a copy of Near Distance here!

The NBCC’s Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize, launched in 2022, seeks to highlight the artistic merit of literature in translation and recognize translators’ valuable work, which expands and enriches American literary culture by bringing world literature to English-language readers. The prize honors the best book of any genre translated into English and published in the United States.

A finalists reading will be be on March 25, 2026, with the awards ceremony and reception on March 26.

ABOUT NEAR DISTANCE

Longlisted for the 2025 Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize

For her entire life, Karin has fled anything and anyone that tries to possess her. Her job demands little, she mostly socializes with men she meets online, and she’s rarely in touch with Helene, her adult daughter. But when Helene’s marriage is threatened, she turns, uncharacteristically, to her mother for commiseration, and a long weekend away in London. As the two women embark on their uneasy companionship, Karin’s past, and the origins of her studied detachments, are cast in a new light, and she can no longer ignore their effects—on not only herself and her own relationships, but on her daughter’s as well.

An unnerving, closely observed study of character—and the choices we do and do not make—Near Distance introduces Hanna Stoltenberg as a writer of piercing insight and startling lucidity.

ABOUT WENDY H. GABRIELSEN

Wendy Harrison Gabrielsen moved to Oslo in 1987 after completing an MA in Translation at the University of Surrey. She has translated works of fiction as well as nonfiction, and in 2022 she was awarded the Wigeland Prize by the American-Scandinavian Foundation for an excerpt from her translation of Hanna Stoltenberg’s Near Distance.

ABOUT HANNA STOLTENBERG

Hanna Stoltenberg (born 1989) grew up in Oslo and studied English at the University of Bristol. She is a regular contributor to the Norwegian literary journal Vinduet and works as an editor at the Munch museum. Her first novel, Near Distance (Nada in Norwegian) was published in 2019. It won the prestigious Tarjei Vesaas first book award and the NATT&DAG Oslo prize for best literary work. She is currently working on her second novel.

BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME a finalist for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction!

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We’re excited to share that Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc, is one of the three finalists for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction! The finalist announcement was made this morning on Tuesday, November 18, and can be viewed here.

The other two nonfiction finalists are There Is No Place for Us: Working and Homeless in America by Brian Goldstone and Things in Nature Merely Grow by Yiyun Li. Read more in the ALA’s full finalists press release here.

The two medal winners for Fiction and Nonfiction will be announced on January 27, 2026. A celebratory event will take place at the ALA Annual Conference in June 2026 in Chicago.

The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, established in 2012, recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the US in the previous year and serve as a guide to help adults select quality reading material. They are the first single-book awards for adult books given by the American Library Association and reflect the expert judgment and insight of library professionals who work closely with adult readers. The winning authors (one for fiction, one for nonfiction) receive a $5,000 cash award.

Grab a copy of Baldwin, Styron, and Me here!

ABOUT BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME

Shortlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Finalist for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • Finalist for the 2025 John Glassco Translation Prize

In 1961, James Baldwin spent several months in William Styron’s guest house. The two wrote during the day, then spent evenings confiding in each other and talking about race in America. During one of those conversations, Baldwin is said to have convinced his friend to write, in first person, the story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. The Confessions of Nat Turner was published to critical acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, and also creating outrage in part of the African American community.

Decades later, the controversy around cultural appropriation, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the writer still resonates. In Baldwin, Styron, and Me, Mélikah Abdelmoumen considers the writers’ surprising yet vital friendship from her standpoint as a racialized woman torn by the often unidimensional versions of her identity put forth by today’s politics and media. Considering questions of identity, race, equity, and the often contentious public debates about these topics, Abdelmoumen works to create a space where the answers are found by first learning how to listen—even in disagreement.

ABOUT MELIKAH ABDELMOUMEN

Mélikah Abdelmoumen was born in Chicoutimi in 1972. She lived in Lyon, France, from 2005 to 2017. She holds a PhD in literary studies from the Université de Montréal and has published many articles, short stories, novels, and essays, including Les désastrées (2013), Douze ans en France (2018), and Petite-Ville (2024). She worked as an editor with the Groupe Ville-Marie Littérature in Montreal until 2021. She was the editor-in-chief of Lettres québécoises, a Québec literary magazine, from 2021 to 2024. Baldwin, Styron, and Me is her tenth book (and the first to be translated).

ABOUT CATHERINE KHORDOC

Catherine Khordoc is a professor of French and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. She is the author of Tours et détours: Le mythe de Babel dans la littérature contemporaine (University of Ottawa Press, 2012). She also considers herself in many ways a frontier-dweller.

BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction

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We’re thrilled to share that this morning, on Thursday, October 23, the longlist for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction was announced, and included Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen, translated by Catherine Khordoc. The full longlist can be viewed here.

The shortlist will be announced on November 18, and the two medal winners will be announced on January 27, 2026.

The Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Fiction and Nonfiction, established in 2012, recognize the best fiction and nonfiction books for adult readers published in the US in the previous year and serve as a guide to help adults select quality reading material. They are the first single-book awards for adult books given by the American Library Association and reflect the expert judgment and insight of library professionals who work closely with adult readers. The winning authors (one for fiction, one for nonfiction) receive a $5,000 cash award.

Grab a copy of Baldwin, Styron, and Me here!

ABOUT BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME

Longlisted for the 2026 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction • Finalist for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • Finalist for the 2025 John Glassco Translation Prize

In 1961, James Baldwin spent several months in William Styron’s guest house. The two wrote during the day, then spent evenings confiding in each other and talking about race in America. During one of those conversations, Baldwin is said to have convinced his friend to write, in first person, the story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. The Confessions of Nat Turner was published to critical acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, and also creating outrage in part of the African American community.

Decades later, the controversy around cultural appropriation, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the writer still resonates. In Baldwin, Styron, and Me, Mélikah Abdelmoumen considers the writers’ surprising yet vital friendship from her standpoint as a racialized woman torn by the often unidimensional versions of her identity put forth by today’s politics and media. Considering questions of identity, race, equity, and the often contentious public debates about these topics, Abdelmoumen works to create a space where the answers are found by first learning how to listen—even in disagreement.

ABOUT MELIKAH ABDELMOUMEN

Mélikah Abdelmoumen was born in Chicoutimi in 1972. She lived in Lyon, France, from 2005 to 2017. She holds a PhD in literary studies from the Université de Montréal and has published many articles, short stories, novels, and essays, including Les désastrées (2013), Douze ans en France (2018), and Petite-Ville (2024). She worked as an editor with the Groupe Ville-Marie Littérature in Montreal until 2021. She was the editor-in-chief of Lettres québécoises, a Québec literary magazine, from 2021 to 2024. Baldwin, Styron, and Me is her tenth book (and the first to be translated).

ABOUT CATHERINE KHORDOC

Catherine Khordoc is a professor of French and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. She is the author of Tours et détours: Le mythe de Babel dans la littérature contemporaine (University of Ottawa Press, 2012). She also considers herself in many ways a frontier-dweller.

2025 Governor General’s Literary Award Finalists: BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME and MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

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We’re excited to share that this morning on Tuesday, October 21, two Biblioasis books were announced as finalists for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation: Catherine Khordoc’s translation of Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen and Donald Winkler’s translation of May Our Joy Endure by Kev Lambert!

View the full finalists announcement on the GG Books website here.

The Canada Council for the Arts funds, administers and actively promotes the Governor General’s Literary Awards (GGBooks) which celebrate literature and inspire people to read books by creators from Canada. The award provides finalists and winners with valuable recognition from peers and readers across the country. The monetary award for finalists is $1,000, and $25,000 for each winning book.

The winners of each category will be announced on Thursday, November 6.

About BALDWIN, STYRON, AND ME

Finalist for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • Finalist for the 2025 John Glassco Translation Prize

In 1961, James Baldwin spent several months in William Styron’s guest house. The two wrote during the day, then spent evenings confiding in each other and talking about race in America. During one of those conversations, Baldwin is said to have convinced his friend to write, in first person, the story of the 1831 slave rebellion led by Nat Turner. The Confessions of Nat Turner was published to critical acclaim, winning the Pulitzer Prize in 1968, and also creating outrage in part of the African American community.

Decades later, the controversy around cultural appropriation, identity, and the rights and responsibilities of the writer still resonates. In Baldwin, Styron, and Me, Mélikah Abdelmoumen considers the writers’ surprising yet vital friendship from her standpoint as a racialized woman torn by the often unidimensional versions of her identity put forth by today’s politics and media. Considering questions of identity, race, equity, and the often contentious public debates about these topics, Abdelmoumen works to create a space where the answers are found by first learning how to listen—even in disagreement.

Catherine Khordoc is a professor of French and Canadian Studies at Carleton University in Ottawa. She is the author of Tours et détours: Le mythe de Babel dans la littérature contemporaine (University of Ottawa Press, 2012). She also considers herself in many ways a frontier-dweller.

Grab a copy of Baldwin, Styron, and Me here!

About MAY OUR JOY ENDURE

Finalist for the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award in Translation • A Walrus Best Book of Fall 2024 • A Globe 100 Best Book of 2024 • Winner of the 2023 Prix Médicis, Prix Décembre, and Prix Ringuet

Céline Wachowski, internationally renowned architect and accidental digital-culture icon, unveils her plans for the Webuy Complex, her first megaproject in Montreal, her hometown. But instead of the triumph she anticipates in finally bringing her reputation to bear in her own city, the project is excoriated by critics, who accuse her of callously destroying the social fabric of neighborhoods, ushering in a new era of gentrification, and many even deadlier sins. When she is deposed as CEO of her firm, Céline must make sense of the charges against herself and the people in her elite circle. For the first time in danger of losing their footing, what fictions must they tell themselves to justify their privilege and maintain their position in the world that they themselves have built?

Moving fluidly between Céline’s perspective and the perspectives of her critics, and revealing both the ruthlessness of her methods and the brilliance of her aesthetic vision, May Our Joy Endure is a shrewd examination of the microcosm of the ultra-privileged and a dazzling social novel that depicts with razor-sharp acuity the terrible beauty of wealth, influence, and art.

Donald Winkler is a translator of fiction, non-fiction, and poetry. He is a three-time winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for French-to-English translation. He lives in Montreal.

Grab a copy of May Our Joy Endure here!