Maria Reva's Endling and Julian Brave NoiseCat's We Survived the Night top BC and Yukon Book Prizes
A photo book celebrating the work of Tamio Wakayama and a poetry collection by Amber Dawn were also amid the winners
A DARKLY COMIC DEBUT novel about a kidnapping in Ukraine and a genre-bending book about intergenerational trauma and Indigenous survival were among the winners as the West Prize Society handed out awards tonight at the 42th annual BC and Yukon Book Prizes.
At the ceremony at University Golf Club in Vancouver, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize went to Maria Reva's Endling (Knopf Canada), an audacious picaresque that touches on everything from endangered snails to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. It’s already nabbed the 2026 Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the 2026 Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the 2025 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, and was longlisted for the 2025 Booker Prize
Julian Brave NoiseCat, We Survived the Night: An Indigenous Reckoning (Random House Canada), a blend of memoir, investigative journalism, and traditional Interior Salish Coyote stories, won the Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize.
The Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize went to Amber Dawn for Buzzkill Clamshell (Arsenal Pulp Press).
And Tamio Wakayama and Paul Wong, Enemy Alien (Figure 1 Publishing) took the Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize for the book that cetnres around the Vancouver Art Gallery exhibition covering the photographic career of Wakayama, the late, New West–born Japanese Canadian artist and civil rights activist.
Léa Taranto, A Drop in the Ocean (Arsenal Pulp Press) won the Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize, while author Samantha Beynon and illustrator Carla Joseph’s Celebrating Potlatches (Strong Nations Publishing) received the Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize.
The Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes was awarded to L.E. Fox for This Book Is a Knife: Radical Working-Class Strategies in the Age of Climate Change (Arsenal Pulp Press).
And the Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award went to The Teachings of Mutton: A Coast Salish Woolly Dog, by Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa, Kerrie Charnley, Tsumi’tsiye Violet Elliott, Tuwuxwul’t-hw Tyrone Elliott, Andrea Fritz, Chepximiya Siyam Chief Dr. Janice George, Skwetsimeltxw Willard “Buddy” Joseph, Danielle Morsette, Michael Pavel, sałamitća Susan Pavel, Xweliqwiya Rena Point Bolton, Quwasen Debra Sparrow, Eliot White-HillKwulasultun, Jared Qwustenuxun Williams, Senaqwila Wyss, and Alison Ariss.
Two awards also recognized writers for their body of work and contributions to the literary community. Winlaw-based Tom Wayman was the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, a prize given to an author who has written a substantial body of literary work throughout their career and contributed significantly to the literary community/industry of the Province of B.C. Tom Wayman’s prolific literary career includes writing more than 20 poetry collections, three collections of critical and cultural essays, three books of short fiction and a novel, as well as editing six poetry anthologies. He received British Columbia’s 2022 George Woodcock Award for Lifetime Achievement in the literary arts. In 2015, he was named a Vancouver Literary Landmark, with a plaque on the city’s Commercial Drive commemorating his championing of people writing about their daily employment.
The Borealis Prize: The Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution went to Dan Dowhal, recognizing someone who has made a substantial contributions to the Yukon writing and publishing community through writing, publishing, community organizing, Indigenous writing and storytelling, and other ways. Dan Dowhal is the author of four novels, Skyfisher, Flam Grub, Bury Your Horses, and Sled Doug, published by Parka Press. 
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