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Karissa Donkin and Nancy Bauer are among the winners of the 2026 New Brunswick Book Awards.
The annual awards, presented by the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick, celebrate the province’s best fiction, nonfiction, poetry and children’s picture books. The 2026 ceremony took place at the Lily Lake Pavilion in Saint John on May 30.
In 2025, a new prize was established called The Legacy Award, honouring a writer for the lasting impact their life has had on New Brunswick’s literary community. The inaugural award went to David Adams Richards.
This year, the award went to Nancy Bauer, a founding member of the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick as well as the Maritime Writers’ Workshop. She was also a member of what became known as the Ice House Gang, a creative writing group that met on UNB’s campus and shaped much of the province’s literary structure.
Fiddlehead trophies, representative of the plant’s significance in New Brunswick, were handblown by Glass Roots, a local glass blowing company, and presented to each winner. (Luke Beirne/CBC)
She said she found out she was receiving the award when she got a phone call a couple of weeks before. “I wasn’t surprised,” she said. “I was awfully pleased but it’s not like somebody being called like ‘you’ve won the Nobel Prize’ or something like that.”
“I do love the fact that it’s Mrs. Dunster’s,” she said about receiving two bags of donuts alongside the award. “It seems so New Brunswick, doesn’t it?”
Donkin received the Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick Nonfiction Award for Breakaway: The PWHL and the Women who Changed the Game. Breakaway is the story of the huge efforts behind the creation of the Professional Women’s Hockey League and its first season in 2024.
Donkin is a reporter with CBC Sports who covers the PWHL. She said it was “a surprise and honour to be on that list” and said she left feeling even more inspired to write.
A cake of all shortlisted titles was served at the ceremony. (Submitted by The Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick)
Jennifer McGrath won the Alice Kitts Award for Excellence in Picture Book Writing for The Pony and the Starling, illustrated by Kristina Jones.
Evan Jones won the Books for Youth and Young Adult Award for What to Do When You Don’t Know What to Do. Jones is a teacher and said that he wrote the book to reach students outside of the classroom and unconstrained by the curriculum.
Michael Simon won the Mrs. Dunster’s Award for Fiction for Extinction. Simon is a family doctor in Saint John.
LISTEN | Michael Simon talks about his nomination before the awards were announced:
Information Morning – Saint John9:23New Brunswick Book Awards nominee
Ian LeTourneau won The Fiddlehead Poetry Book Prize for metadata from a changing climate.
“A lot of it has to do with climate anxiety,” he said about his book. He also called the award ceremony nerve racking. “I think the poetry category was the third one they presented and I was ready for it by the time it came around,” he said. “I just wanted to know.”
Robert Stutt won the Mrs. Dunster’s Award for Fiction for Puppet. Stutt was a puppeteer for more than 200 episodes of CBC’s Under the Umbrella Tree.
James Mullinger and author Chuck Bowie at the NB Book Awards 2026. Mullinger was this year’s keynote speaker. (Luke Beirne/CBC)
Comedian and 2023 Nonfiction Award Winner James Mullinger was the event’s keynote speaker.
The prize judges were Mark Leslie Lefebvre for fiction, Hollay Ghadery for poetry, Carolyne Van Der Meer for nonfiction, Lesley Choyce for Books for youth and young adult and Sarah Butland for picture book writing.
