Every year, CBC Books enlists the help of established writers and editors from across Canada to read the thousands of entries submitted to our prizes.
Our readers compile the longlist, which is given to the jury.
This year’s jury, composed of Claire Cameron, Niigaan Sinclair and Teresa Wong, will then select the shortlist and the eventual winner from the longlisted selections.
You can meet the readers for the 2026 CBC Nonfiction Prize below.
The 2026 CBC Nonfiction Prize is accepting submissions until March 1.
The winner will receive $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have their work published on CBC Books.
Here are the writers who will be reading the submissions to the 2026 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
Andrea Currie
Finding Otipemisiwak is a memoir by Andrea Currie, pictured. (Arsenal Pulp Press, Ken Woroner)
Andrea Currie is a Red River Métis writer, healer and activist. She lives in Cape Breton where she works as a psychotherapist in Indigenous mental health.
Finding Otipemisiwak is the story of Currie’s journey as a Sixties Scoop survivor to find her Métis roots and reunite with her birth family. It’s a tale of survival, identity, family and culture in the face of colonial practices and Indigenous erasure.
Lindsay Diehl
Reading with My Grandmother is a book by Lindsay Diehl. (Wilfrid Laurier University Press, Ryan Dunbar/Two Four Zero Photography)
Lindsay Diehl is a writer and educator at the University of Manitoba’s Department of English. Her areas of expertise include Canadian literature, creative writing and Asian Canadian studies. Her book The Routledge Introduction to Asian Canadian Literature is forthcoming in 2026.
Reading with My Grandmother: Chinese Canadian Literature, History, and Family draws on literary works and inherited stories to give voice to otherwise silenced and often traumatized experiences. Diehl also explores questions of connection, community and identity that have national, gendered and racialized implications.
Kate Gies
It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished is a book by Kate Gies. (Will O’Hare, Simon & Schuster)
Kate Gies teaches at George Brown College. Her writing has been published in The Malahat Review, The Humber Literary Review, Hobart, Minola Review and The Conium Review. She was also longlisted for the 2018 CBC Nonfiction Prize for Kids of 7C — which became a chapter in her memoir.
In It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished, Gies recounts her experiences as a young girl born without an ear and the 14 surgeries she underwent before the age of 13 to craft the appearance of an outer ear. Through poignant vignettes, her memoir details the path to accepting her body.
LISTEN | Kate Gies’ powerful journey to self-love:
Bookends with Mattea Roach33:33Kate Gies: Reclaiming her body after years of medical trauma
Kawika Guillermo
Of Floating Isles is a collection of essays by Kawika Guillermo. (Robin Evans, Arsenal Pulp Press)
Kawika Guillermo is the pen name of B.C. author Chris Patterson. They are the author of Stamped: an anti-travel novel, Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir and Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games. They currently teach game studies at the University of British Columbia.
Of Floating Isles is a collection of essays in which the author explores the roles that video games play in our lives. It’s those video games that shaped Guillermo as a queer mixed-race scholar, immigrant and father. The book reframes gamers as members of a community instead of isolated individuals. Guillermo expands on the thesis that video games have the ability to offer guidance in times of loss and hardship, but also the power to reveal the oppressive mechanisms of our real world.
LISTEN | Kawika Guillermo discusses his book on Bookends with Mattea Roach:
Bookends with Mattea Roach30:44Video games are radical. Not in the way you think
Tamara Jong
Worldly Girls is a memoir by Tamara Jong. (Book*hug Press, Deepa Rajagopalan)
Tamara Jong is a writer of Chinese and European ancestry, born in Montréal. Her work has appeared in Humber Literary Review, Room Magazine and The Fiddlehead, among others. A graduate of The Writer’s Studio at Simon Fraser University, she now lives in Guelph, Ont. Worldly Girls is her debut book.
In Worldly Girls, Jong reflects on growing up with an emotionally distant father and an alcoholic mother, and how she once believed the Jehovah’s Witness faith would protect her from pain — including infertility and mental health struggles. It was only after rejecting that belief system that she began her journey toward healing.
LISTEN | Tamara Jong discusses her memoir Worldly Girls:
The Morning Edition – K-W6:07Guelph author explores grief, suicide and loss of faith in memoir Worldly Girls
Patty Krawec
Bad Indians Book Club is a book by Patty Krawec. ( Goose Lane Editions, Haley Bateman)
Patty Krawec, of Anishinaabe and Ukrainian descent, is a member of the Lac Seul First Nation in Treaty 3 territory. She is a former social worker and the founding director of the Nii’kinaaganaa Foundation. Her work, centred on how Anishinaabe belonging and thought can shape faith and social justice, has been featured in Sojourners, Rampant Magazine and Midnight Sun, among others. She is also the author of Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future. She lives in Niagara Falls, Ont.
In Bad Indians Book Club, Patty Krawec draws on conversations with writers and readers who identify as “Bad Indians” — those who reject the dominant European settler narrative. Together, they reflect on how stories by and about marginalized voices can help us imagine new possibilities for identity and ways of being.
LISTEN | Patty Krawec on The Next Chapter with Antonio Michael Downing:
The Next Chapter25:32What does it mean to be a Bad Indian?
Vinh Nguyen
The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse is a memoir by Vinh Nguyen. (Nam Phi Dang, Harper Collins Canada)
Vinh Nguyen is a Toronto-based writer, editor and educator whose work has been published in Brick, Literary Hub and The Malahat Review. He is a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly, where he curates an ongoing series on refugee, migrant and diasporic writing. He was shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and won the John Charles Polanyi Prize for Literature. In 2022, he was a Lambda Literary nonfiction fellow.
In his memoir, The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse, Vinh Nguyen retraces his family’s journey from post-war Vietnam to Canada — and how this moment in history resonates with experiences in the diaspora today. The work is a genre-bending mix of real-life experiences, meticulous research and inventive history to explore the nature of family, immigration and identity.
The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse was a finalist for the 2025 Governor General Literary Award for nonfiction and was shortlisted for the 2025 Toronto Book Award.
LISTEN | Vinh Nguyen on The Sunday Magazine:
The Sunday Magazine17:59Memories of Vietnam, 50 years after the war
Cole Nowicki
Laser Quit Smoking Massage is a collection of essays by Cole Nowicki. (NeWest Press, Grady Mitchell)
Cole Nowicki is a writer, producer and publisher originally from Lac La Biche, Alta., who now lives and works in Vancouver. His work has been featured in publications such The Walrus, Catapult, Vice, The Outline, Maisonneuve and Quartersnacks.
He is the author of Right, Down + Circle, was a columnist for King Skateboard Magazine, lead writer for the acclaimed documentary series Post Radical, and writes Simple Magic, a weekly newsletter about skateboarding, the Internet and other means of escape.
Laser Quit Smoking Massage explores questions of family, community and belonging amid the rural and urban spaces that make up Western Canada. The book won the Trade Non-Fiction book of the Year category of the 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards.
LISTEN | Cole Nowicki discusses his essay collection:
The Next Chapter13:01Bar karaoke characters and life in Western Canada in Cole Nowicki’s essay collection
Chyana Marie Sage
Soft as Bones is a memoir by Chyana Marie Sage. (House of Anansi Press, Nicole Niteka)
Chyana Marie Sage is a Cree, Métis and Salish writer based in Edmonton. Her journalism has appeared in the Toronto Star, Huff Post and the New Quarterly. Sage won first place in the Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest and silver in the National Magazine Awards for her essay Soar. She holds an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University where she taught as an adjunct professor. She also teaches Indigenous youth about cultivating self-love and healing through the Connected North program.
In Soft as Bones, Sage shares the pain of growing up with her father, a crack dealer who went to prison for molesting her older sister, and the self-destructive ways with which she coped. By revisiting her family’s history, she describes the experience of overcoming generational trauma that began with her grandfather, who was forcibly separated from his family through residential schools and the Sixties Scoop. She reflects on how the traditions of her Cree culture played a crucial role in her healing.
LISTEN | Chyana Marie Sage on Bookends with Mattea Roach:
Bookends with Mattea Roach34:52Weaving a story of family trauma and celebrating the beauty in survival
Michael V. Smith
Soundtrack is a lyric memoir by Michael V. Smith. (Book*hug Press, Sarah Race Photography)
Michael V. Smith is a writer, filmmaker and professor of creative writing at University of British Columbia’s Okanagan campus. His other books include his memoir, My Body Is Yours, the poetry collection Queers Like Me and the novel Bad Ideas. Smith won the inaugural Dayne Ogilvie Award for Emerging Gay Writers. He currently lives in Kelowna, B.C.
In the poetic memoir Soundtrack, Smith reflects on growing up gay under the shadow of AIDS, and uses songs and albums to capture the last three decades of the millennium. He explores social prejudices, court rulings, medical breakthroughs and personal moments of loss, joy, love and community — from first crushes to dancing at gay bars.
LISTEN | Michael V. Smith discusses his poetic memoir Soundtrack:
North by Northwest18:01Michael V. Smith on “Soundtrack: A Lyric Memoir”
Kasia Van Schaik
Women Among Monuments is a book by Kasia Van Schaik. (Greg Sides, Dundurn Press)
Kasia Van Schaik is an assistant professor of English and creative writing and co-director of the creative writing program at the University of New Brunswick. Her other books include We Have Never Lived On Earth, which was nominated for the 2023 Giller Prize, the Concordia University First Book Prize and the ReLit Prize for short fiction. It was also named one of the best books of 2023 by the Miramichi Reader.
Women Among Monuments asks: what are the necessary conditions for female genius? Featuring a diverse cast of cultural sources and artistic icons — from Georgia O’Keeffe to Ana Mendieta, Gertrude Stein to Jamaica Kincaid, Leslie Marmon Silko to Bernadette Mayer — where does their inner flint of artistic permission come from?
Aaron Williams
The Last Logging Show is a book by Aaron Williams. (Harbour Publishing, Lori A. May)
Aaron Williams is from B.C. and currently based in Halifax. His first book Chasing Smoke: A Wildfire Memoir chronicled his experiences fighting forest fires in various places.
Williams was born into a family with nearly a century of experience in the logging business. But with the industry collapsing and loggers becoming increasingly unwelcome in the ancient forests of Haida Gwaii, Williams believed his destiny lay elsewhere.
In The Last Logging Show, Williams takes a thoughtful look at an industry in the middle of a paradigm shift and the interconnected lives of the people — including his father — in and around the logging business.
LISTEN | Aaron Williams discusses his latest book:
Daybreak North6:14Haida Gwaii logger’s book wins non-fiction award.
