TORONTO — Maria Reva’s Ukraine-set satirical novel “Endling” has won the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
The work of metafiction, which follows three women in the bridal tourism industry whose ill-conceived kidnapping scheme is interrupted by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, took home the $70,000 prize at the annual Writers’ Trust Awards on Thursday.
Mattea Roach hosted the ceremony, during which the Writers’ Trust of Canada handed out hundreds of thousands of dollars in prize money.
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson won the $75,000 Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction for her book “Theory of Water: Nishnaabe Maps to the Times Ahead,” which explores the lessons to be learned from the interconnectedness of water in its various forms.
Roza Nozari won the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers for her memoir “All the Parts We Exile,” in which she examines her family’s flight from Iran and her own queer identity.
A handful of authors also won awards celebrating their careers, including Bren Simmers, who received the $60,000 Latner Griffin Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize and “Mabel Murple” author Sheree Fitch, who got the $40,000 Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life.
Meanwhile, Julie Flett won the $40,000 Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People, and Kim Thúy won the $25,000 Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award, which is meant to encourage an author with a remarkable body of work to keep on writing.
Nicole Thompson, The Canadian Press
