ABOUT
The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is the first major English-language literary prize to celebrate creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States, awarding $150,000 USD to its winner, and $12,500 USD to each of its four finalists.
Prize Award Generously Presented by
The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction aims to address the continued inequality of women in the literary world. Novels, short story collections, and graphic novels written by women and non-binary authors and published in the United States and Canada are eligible for the Prize.
Co-founded by Susan Swan, C.M., Janice Zawerbny, and Don Oravec in 2012, the Prize presented its inaugural award in 2023 to Emmy-nominated author and filmmaker Fatimah Asghar for their novel When We Were Sisters. Learn more about each years’ Longlist, Shortlist, and Winners here.
The winner of The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is awarded $150,000 U.S. dollars. Four finalists will also each receive $12,500 U.S. dollars. Should a translation win the Prize, $100,000 will be awarded to the author and $50,000 to the translator.
In addition to the Prize, The Carol Shields Prize Foundation itself supports women and non-binary writers through a range of mentorships, scholarships, and residencies across Canada and the U.S. Learn more about our other programming here.
2025 Announcement Schedule:
Jury: February 6, 2025
Longlist: March 6, 2025
Shortlist: April 3, 2025
Prize: May 1, 2025 in Chicago
FAQs
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The statistics about inequality in publishing apply to both Canada and the U.S. This is not just a Canadian or a U.S. issue, but an issue in both these countries—and beyond.
These countries make up the major English language book markets in North America. While each country has its own literary culture, authors, and publishing industry, there is a lot that is shared between both. We see this as an opportunity to celebrate women and non-binary writers across both exceptional literary industries.
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Women writers historically earn less than their male counterparts, despite efforts to level the playing field. In the ecosystem of literary awards especially, women are still far less likely to be nominated for prestigious prizes — despite producing just over 50% of new titles, and accounting for 58% of English-language sales in the “literature & fiction” category.
Winning a prize has longterm economic impacts on a writer’s career. Sales of a book following a winning nomination have been shown to increase 400–700%, in some cases.
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Each year, the current Authors Committee for The Carol Shields Prize Foundation nominates and votes on members of the following Prize year’s Jury. The 2024 Prize Jury was selected by our 2023 Authors Committee: Myriam J. A. Chancy and Charlotte Gray (Co-Chairs); Janie Chang; Lan Samantha Chang; Jamie Figueroa; Casey Plett; Jane Smiley; Noreen Tomassi; Natasha Trethewey; Aritha van Herk
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The Prize is open to novels, short story collections, and graphic novels written by women and non-binary writers for an adult audience. The Prize recognizes trans-women as women without qualification.
Books that have been translated from another language are eligible and will be considered in the year that the English translation is published in Canada and/or the U.S.
All submissions must be made by the book’s publisher. The originating publisher and imprint must be U.S. or Canadian based. Books not initially published in the U.S. or Canada, even if distributed into the markets, are not eligible.