Publisher Description
This much-anticipated, game-changing special edition of Canada’s premier annual fiction anthology celebrates the country’s best emerging Black writers.
For over thirty years, The Journey Prize Stories has consistently introduced audiences to the next generation of great Canadian writers. The 33rd edition of Canada’s most prestigious annual fiction anthology proudly continues this tradition by celebrating the best emerging Black writers in the country, as selected by a jury comprising internationally acclaimed, award-winning writers David Chariandy, Esi Edugyan, and Canisia Lubrin.
An eagle-eyed mother and a hungry child contend with the aftereffects of an unusual multi-course meal. Both the debts of the past and the promise of the future hover over two siblings as they debate what to do with an unexpected windfall. A pesky but beloved baboon looms large in the memory of a daughter whose family has been forced to move to a new town. Unclear boundaries and cheerful hypocrisy dominate a woman’s whirlwind romance with a photographer. A schoolgirl contends with complicated emotions as she awaits the return of her long-absent mother. News of a hunter’s death reverberates throughout his family, travelling across oceans and phonelines to trouble his cousin’s already-shaky relationship. An office worker joins a lost grandmother on an unexpected pilgrimage. After years away, a woman journeys back to Jamaica—and back to the sister who refused to leave with her—stirring up insecurities, laughter, and wounds unhealed by time. All the instructions in the world cannot protect a family from the impacts of grief. The only Black girls in school experiment with what it means to be a lady when you’re not yet a woman.
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About the Authors
Esi Edugyan is the author of several books, including Washington Black, longlisted for the ScotiaBank Giller Prize and the Man Booker Prize. Half Blood Blues won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and was a finalist for the Man Booker Prize, the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Rogers Writers’ Trust Prize and the Orange Prize. Her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne, was nominated for the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award and was chosen by the New York Public Library as one of 2004’s Books to Remember. She has a masters degree in writing from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars and has held fellowships in the United States, Scotland, Iceland, Germany, Hungary, Finland, Spain, and Belgium. She has taught creative writing at both Johns Hopkins University and the University of Victoria and has sat on many international panels.
David Chariandy is Canadian author of several books whose writings earned him the 2019 Windham-Campbell Prize in Fiction. His debut novel, Soucouyant, received stunning reviews and nominations from eleven literary awards juries, including a Governor General’s Literary Award shortlisting, a Gold Independent Publisher Award for Best Novel, and the Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist. He grew up in Toronto and lives and teaches in Vancouver.