5 Canadian authors shortlisted for $10K Danuta Gleed Literary Award for best debut short story collection
The award honours the best debut short fiction collection by a Canadian author
Five Canadian authors are shortlisted for the 2024 Danuta Gleed Literary Award.
The $10,000 award is given out annually to the year's best first collection of short fiction. Two additional prizes of $1,000 are also awarded.
Administered by The Writers' Union of Canada, the award is funded by John Gleed in memory of his wife, writer Danuta Gleed. Her short fiction won numerous awards before she died in 1996 and her short fiction book, One of the Chosen, was published posthumously.
The shortlist was determined from 33 collections published in 2024.
The nominees are:
- Perfect Little Angels by Vincent Anioke
- Coexistence by Billy-Ray Belcourt
- Death by a Thousand Cuts by Shashi Bhat
- Code Noir by Canisia Lubrin
- Smoke by Nicola Winstanley
Perfect Little Angels is a short story collection set mostly in Nigeria, pondering questions of expectation, desire and duty among its various characters. From boarding school tensions to secret rendezvous between lovers in a hill, the stories explore masculinity, religion, othering, queerness, love and self-expression.
Vincent Anioke was born and raised in Nigeria and now lives in Waterloo. Ont. He has been a finalist for the 2023 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers and the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, and won the Austin Clarke Fiction Prize in 2021. His work has been featured in SmokeLong Quarterly, The Rumpus, The Masters Review and Passages North. CBC Books named Anioke as one of the 2024 writers to watch.
Anioke's short story Leave A Funny Message At The Beep was longlisted for the 2024 CBC Short Story Prize. His story Utopia was longlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize twice, in 2021 and 2023.
Coexistence by Billy-Ray Belcourt follows characters with gently intersecting lives, exploring themes of love, loneliness, and belonging.
Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer from Driftpile Cree Nation in Alberta. His debut collection of poetry, This Wound is a World, is unapologetically Indigenous and queer at the same time. Belcourt issues a call to turn to love and sex to understand how Indigenous peoples shoulder sadness and pain without giving up on the future.
Shashi Bhat's Death By A Thousand Cuts is a short story collection exploring the everyday impossible expectations that come with being a woman. It was longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize.
Shashi Bhat, a writer who lives in New Westminster, B.C., is also the author of the novel The Most Precious Substance on Earth, which was a finalist for the 2022 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction. Her short story Mute won the 2018 Writers' Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. She has been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award. She is also the author of the novel The Family Took Shape.
The Code Noir, or the Black Code, was a set of 59 articles decreed by Louis XVI in 1685 which regulated ownership of slaves in all French colonies. In Code Noir, Lubrin reflects on these codes to examine the legacy of enslavement and colonization — and the inherent power of Black resistance.
Canisia Lubrin is a writer, editor and teacher. Her debut poetry collection Voodoo Hypothesis was longlisted for the Gerald Lambert Award, the Pat Lowther Award and was a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award. Her poetry collection The Dyzgraphxst,won the 2021 OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature. It won the 2021 Griffin Poetry Prize and was a finalist for the 2020 Governor General's Literary Prize for poetry.
Nicola Winstanley is a children's book author based in Hamilton, Ont. Her book How to Give Your Cat a Bath was a finalist for the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for young people's literature — illustration. Smoke is Winstanley's first work for adults. The short story collection moves between New Zealand and Canada, exploring the effects of intergenerational trauma. Told from multiple perspectives, these often heartbreaking stories deal with responsibility, fate, and the search for understanding. Ultimately, Smoke is a book about grace and compassion.
This year's jury was Francine Cunningham, Kim Fu, and D.A. Lockhart.
The winners will be announced in early June.
Last year's winner was Lisa Alward for her collection Cocktail.
Other past winners include Kim Fu, Zalika Reid-Benta, Carrianne Leung, David Bezmozgis, Ian Williams and Heather O'Neill.
