For over thirty years, The Journey Prize Stories has consistently introduced readers 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.

The author

David Chariandy is the author of Soucouyant, which was nominated for eleven literary awards, including the Governor General’s Award and the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and Brother, nominated for fourteen awards, winning the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, and the Toronto Book Award. His most recent book is a memoir entitled I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You: A Letter to My Daughter. David lives in Vancouver and teaches literature and creative writing at Simon Fraser University. In 2019, he received the Windham-Campbell Prize for fiction. In 2022, he was elected a fellow of the Academies of Arts, Humanities, and Sciences of Canada.

Esi Edugyan is the award-winning and internationally bestselling author of Washington Black, a finalist for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Man Booker Prize, and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize; Half-Blood Blues, a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award and the Man Booker Prize, and winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize; and The Second Life of Samuel Tyne. She is also the author of Dreaming of Elsewhere, which is part of the Kreisel Memorial Lecture Series, and Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling, the 2021 CBC Massey Lectures. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Canisia Lubrin is the author of two books of poetry, Voodoo Hypothesis, a finalist for the Raymond Souster Award, and The Dyzgraphxst, which won the Griffin Poetry Prize and the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and was a finalist for the Derek Walcott Poetry Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award for Poetry. She was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award for her fiction contribution to The Unpublished City: Vol 1 and twice longlisted for the Journey Prize. In 2019, she was named a Writers’ Trust 2020 Rising Star, and in 2021, she was a recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize. Her fiction debut, Code Noir, is forthcoming from Knopf Canada.