The 2026 Shortlist for The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
Hellions by Julia Elliott (Tin House)
The White Hot by Quiara Alegría Hudes (One World)
Cannon by Lee Lai (Drawn & Quarterly)
A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar (McClelland & Stewart, Canada; Knopf, USA)
Lion by Sonya Walger (New York Review Books)
The winner of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction will receive $150,000 USD and a five-night stay at Fogo Island Inn.
The four finalists will each receive $12,500 USD.
The winner and four finalists will be invited to participate in a group retreat residency in the Leighton Artist Studios, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity in Alberta, Canada.
This year’s nominees were chosen by a Jury of writers made up of Carmen Maria Machado (Jury Chair), Ivan Coyote, Cherie Dimaline, Chitra Divakaruni, and Deesha Philyaw.
The winner will be announced on June 2 at a ceremony in Toronto, Canada.
The prize is generously supported by BMO, which has been the award sponsor since 2023.
“Congratulations to the 2026 finalists from everyone at the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. These five books represent literary excellence across a diverse range of genres, including novels, a graphic novel, and a short story collection. We are fiercely committed to championing women and non-binary authors working in Canada and the United States, ensuring their stories receive the global recognition and support they deserve. To that end, we encourage everyone to read these books, and to pass them on to friends.”
Jury Citations for the 2026 Shortlist
“This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of HELLIONS crackles or crawls. Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic. There’s folklore in these stories, and Southern gothic horror, and surrealism, and fantasy, and, at their center, a thread of uneasy, bodily realism. The work evokes writers like Angela Carter, Dorothy Allison, Gloria Naylor, and Kelly Link. But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control; Elliot is a gifted and thrilling writer.”
“In THE WHITE HOT, a woman, a mother, a daughter of immigrants, does the unthinkable: She leaves. April Soto has inherited a legacy of seeking from foremothers who had to ‘escape in order not to die.’ With unflinching and embodied prose, Quiara Alegría Hudes brings us along April’s wrenching and immersive journey. The novel’s epistolary narrative eschews ‘right vs. wrong’ to raise a more labyrinthine set of questions about rage, duty, and motherhood, to which there are no comfortable answers. At the heart of this masterful work is the most uncomfortable question of all: ‘How could love look like leaving?’”
“Author and artist Lee Lai blends strikingly simple dialogue, a sparse illustrative style, and a precise eye for emotional detail in this beautiful graphic novel that shows us the messy insides of a working-class life, a fractured family, and a faltering friendship. CANNON investigates huge topics like cultural identity, elder care, death, betrayal, regret, and necessary rage, while still compelling the reader to stay up until the last page has been turned.”
“This harrowing yet captivating novel fills us simultaneously with horror and compassion. Set in a dystopian Kolkata battered by poverty, starvation and severe climate change, it drags readers from complacency and forces them to face what can happen to our values when our dearest ones are stalked by disaster. Through trenchant images, deft character creation, and breathtaking plot-twists, Majumdar embroils us in the lives of Ma and Boomba until we are no longer sure who is the guardian and who the thief.”
“With a mastery of skill, a deft hand, and a brilliant grasp of everything dark and aching that moves us, Sonya Walger has delivered a book that reaches in and yanks out the beating heart of family. LION is a fully unique accomplishment that re-sets the bar for excellence in craft, the revelatory work of fiction, and the purpose of personal writing. Robust and universal while remaining intimate and fragile, LION is an unforgettable look inside a tumultuous relationship and the extraordinary echoes we produce with the most ordinary of words, both those we hold onto and those left unsaid.”
You are invited to a reading and discussion celebrating the shortlist on June 1 at Lula Lounge in Toronto moderated by 2025 Shields Prize Winner, Canisia Lubrin.
This is a ticketed event open to the public. Please read event details carefully on the Eventbrite page. Click here to purchase tickets.
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If you are in the U.S., click here to shop the 2026 Prize list on Bookshop.org
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