The Writers’ Trust of Canada has revealed the 2026 finalists for the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award.
The prize recognizes emerging Canadian writers for poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction who have yet to be published in book form.
This is the second year that the prize is extended to include writers of creative nonfiction. The winner of each prize will receive $10,000. Each finalist will receive $2,500.
This prize was established in 1994 to honour the life and career of Bronwen Wallace, a poet and short story writer who felt that writers should have more opportunities for recognition early in their careers.
Jeremy Audet, Renato Gandia and Rachel Robb are the finalists for the poetry prize.
Audet is nominated for his poem Earth Gigantic, which jurors Jeff Latosik, Zehra Naqvi and Chuqiao Yang said “roves masterfully through ecosystems, migratory patterns, and shifting seasons to witness the profound and multifaceted experiences of love and grief.”
Based in Montreal, Audet is the nonfiction editor at yolk and the founding editor of Canto. He won the Bridge Prize and has been shortlisted for the Montreal International Poetry Prize, the Foster Poetry Prize and the Open Season Award for Poetry. He is a writer-in-residence at the Al & Eurithe Purdy A-Frame Association.
Gandia is shortlisted for his poem Psalmody for the Estranged. “These poems appeal to our basic needs to belong, to experience awe, to be seen, and to be accepted,” said the jury in a press statement.
Gandia is a Filipino Canadian writer based in Calgary. His work has won the 2025 Pacific Spirit Poetry Prize and was on the shortlist for the 2026 Open Season Awards at The Malahat Review.
Robb is nominated for Bugonia, Bugonia & Other Poems, which the jury calls “ambitious and measured, attentive to what a poem can truly hold.”
Robb is a writer and educator of Jamaican and Irish heritage. Her poetry can be found in the Bridport Prize anthology and was shortlisted for The Fiddlehead’s Ralph Gustafson Poetry Prize, The Alpine Fellowship and the Montreal International Poetry Prize.
She won the 2024 CBC Poetry Prize, which is now accepting submissions until June 1 at 4:59 p.m. ET. The winner receives $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and their work is published on CBC Books.
Julia Cottrelle, Rebecca Peng and Dilan Qadir are the finalists in the short fiction category, selected by jurors Jamaluddin Aram, Jen Neale and Nathan Whitlock.
Cottrelle is shortlisted for her story The Old Turtle Climb, which the jury called “quietly devastating.”
Cottrelle is a writer based in Toronto whose work has been featured in The Fiddlehead, Room Magazine, subTerrain and the Emerging Writers’ Reader Series. She has also served on the editorial board for The Fiddlehead and PRISM international.
Peng is nominated for the story The Department of Unjust Histories. The jury praised it as a “shrewd and quick-witted satire.”
She is a writer and podcast producer based in Toronto. Her work can be found in Room Magazine, The Orange & Bee and The Walrus. She is finishing her Master’s in creative writing at The University of Toronto.
Qadir is shortlisted for Interpreter of Afflictions. “Qadir’s words are selected with prudence, resulting in meticulous prose that is at once sparse and full,” said the jury.
Qadir is a Kurdish Canadian writer based in Vancouver. He was a 2025 Writers’ Trust Rising Star and won the PEN Canada-Humber College Writers-in-Exile Scholarship in 2023.
Katie Lawrence, Graham Slaughter and Erin Soros are shortlisted for creative nonfiction. They were selected by jurors Alison Calder, Robert McGill and Padma Viswanathan.
Lawrence has made the list for Paint Job, “a time capsule that transports readers to the fraught ground of young adulthood,” according to the jury.
Lawrence is a storyteller based in Toronto. Her writing has appeared in The Dalhousie Review, La Piccioletta Barca and Spellbinder. Her work has been performed at the Halifax Fringe Festival and The Creative School Chrysalis, and is set to also hit the stage at the 2026 Toronto Fringe Festival.
This is Slaughter’s second time shortlisting for the creative nonfiction award, this time for a piece titled The Perfect Home for Your Child.
“The Perfect Home for Your Child brings equal measures of acuity and empathy to its story of a would-be adoptive couple as they wait for a prospective birth mother to decide if she will keep her child,” said the jury.
Slaughter is a writer based in Toronto. His work was shortlisted for PEN Canada’s New Voices Award and longlisted for The Masters Review Novel Excerpt Contest. His writing can be found in PRISM international, the Toronto Star, Toronto Life and Canadian Geographic.
Soros is on the shortlist for You Have to Live Long and Be Happy.
“Soros tunnels through a peaceful interlude, a woman visiting Ireland with her elderly mother, into darkness and troubled pasts,” said the jury.
She is a writer based in Vancouver. Her work has been published in Carte Blanche, English Studies in Canada and Exile Literary Quarterly. She won the The Malahat Review Long Poem Prize, the 2023 Writers’ Union of Canada Short Prose Award, the Commonwealth Short Story Prize and a 2021 National Magazine Award.
Soros won the 2005 CBC Short Story Prize for The Chorus and was shortlisted for the 2019 CBC Poetry Prize for You Left Something.
The 2026 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award winners will be announced at a Toronto event on June 1. Their work can be found on the Writers’ Trust website or on Apple Books.
Last year’s winners were Dora Prieto, Jess Goldman and Phillip Dwight Morgan.
Michael Crummey was the first writer to receive the prize. Other past winners include Maria Reva, Jeramy Dodds, Alison Pick and Alissa York.
The Writers’ Trust of Canada is a charitable organization that seeks to advance, nurture and celebrate Canadian writers and writing. Its programming includes 11 national literary awards, financial grants, career development initiatives for emerging writers and a writers’ retreat.
