Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, André Alexis, and Ian Williams are on the Giller Prize 2025 longlist announced on Monday, September 15, 2025.
The Giller Prize, founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994, awards $100,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel, graphic novel, or short story collection published in English. The award is named in honour of the late literary journalist Doris Giller by her husband, Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch, who passed away in August 2017. Omar El Akkad won it in 2021.
The 2025 jury is chaired by fiction author and creative writing professor Dionne Irving, alongside author Loghan Paylor, and award-winning writer Deepa Rajagopalan. From more than 100 books submitted by publishers from across Canada, they announced a longlist of 14 titles on Monday, September 15.
They said of the longlist: “The books on this year’s Giller Prize longlist represent a range of Canadian identities and experiences: characters on the open prairies, claustrophobic communities in our urban centers, and boundless representations of the imagined worlds in which Canadians find themselves. The powerful voices on this longlist depict a Canada and a world that’s compelling, dangerous, and simultaneously compassionate and inviting. These works illuminate the everyday and the otherworldly, considering what it means to be human in these funny, sad, joyful, and complicated times. Our longlist explicates the best and worst of us and elevates stories that are concerned with our country and the world beyond its borders, our preoccupations with the land we inhabit and disturb. These books investigate what it means to live here. Whenever that might be. They uncover unexpected communities and friendships, rendering with precision and beauty the anxieties and heartaches tethered to life and death. These texts demonstrate how we are an interconnected, global community, however cacophonous our collective cries. The power of the voices on this year’s longlist astonished the judges. These authors urgently compel readers to be transported, to be lifted up, and ultimately, to love.”
Featuring on the longlist are the following titles written by the following writers of African descent;
- Other Worlds, André Alexis, McClelland & Stewart
- We, The Kindling, Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, Alchemy By Knopf Canada
- You’ve Changed, Ian Williams, Random House Canada
The Giller Prize shortlist will be announced on Monday, October 6, before the winner is revealed on Monday, November 17, on CBC TV and CBC Gem.
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