The Writers’ Union of Canada and the Gleed family are pleased to announce the jury for the $10,000 Danuta Gleed Literary Award, Canada’s pre-eminent award for the best first Canadian collection of short fiction in the English language, now celebrating its 27th year.
This year’s jury comprises authors Danila Botha, paulo da costa, and Souvankham Thammavongsa.
A short list will be announced in May 2024, with the winner and two finalists being named in June 2024. The winner receives $10,000 and each of the two finalists is awarded $1,000.
To be eligible, books must be first collections of short fiction written by a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and published in Canada in the English language in the 2023 calendar year. The deadline for submissions is January 31, 2024. Eligible titles may be submitted by publishers according to submission guidelines available at writersunion.ca/danuta-gleed-literary-award.
ABOUT THE JURY
Danila Botha is the author of three short story collections, Got No Secrets, For All the Men (and Some of the Women) I’ve Known, which was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award, The Vine Awards, and the ReLit Award, and her new collection Things that Cause Inappropriate Happiness, which will be published in March 2024 by Guernica Editions. She is also the author of the award-winning novel Too Much on the Inside, which was optioned for film. Her new novel, A Place for People Like Us, will be published by Guernica in 2025. She is part of the faculty at Humber School for Writers and teaches Creative Writing at University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies. She just completed her first graphic novel.
Born in Angola, and raised in Portugal, paulo da costa is a writer, editor, and translator living in Canada. He is twice the recipient of the James H. Gray Award for Short Nonfiction (2023 and 2020), the 2003 Commonwealth First Book Prize for the Canada-Caribbean Region, the W. O. Mitchell City of Calgary Book Prize, and the Canongate Prize for short-fiction. His poetry, fiction, and non-fiction have been published widely in literary magazines around the world and translated into Italian, Spanish, Serbian, Slovenian, and Portuguese. The Midwife of Torment is his latest book of fiction. Trust the Bluer Skies: Meditations on Fatherhood, a book of creative nonfiction, is forthcoming in 2024 with University of Regina Press.
Souvankham Thammavongsa is the author of four poetry books, and the short story collection How to Pronounce Knife, winner of the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize and 2021 Trillium Book Award, finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, PEN/America Open Book Award, and Danuta Gleed Literary Award. Her stories have won an O. Henry prize and appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Harper's Magazine, The Atlantic, and Granta
ABOUT THE AWARD
The Danuta Gleed Literary Award was created as a celebration of the life of Danuta Gleed, a writer whose short fiction won several awards before her death in 1996. Danuta Gleed’s first collection of short fiction, One of the Chosen, was posthumously published by BuschekBooks. The Award is made possible through a generous donation from John Gleed in memory of his late wife, and is administered by The Writers’ Union of Canada. The Award was first given in 1998 for books published in 1997.
The Writers’ Union of Canada (TWUC) is the national organization of professionally published writers. TWUC was founded in 1973 to work with governments, publishers, booksellers, and readers to improve the conditions of Canadian writers. Now over 2,800 members strong, TWUC advocates on behalf of writers’ collective interests, and delivers value to members through advocacy, community, and information. TWUC believes in a thriving, diverse Canadian culture that values and supports writers.
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For additional information:
Siobhan O'Connor
Chief Operating Officer
The Writers’ Union of Canada
soconnor@writersunion.ca
Press inquiries:
John Degen
Chief Executive Officer
The Writers’ Union of Canada
jdegen@writersunion.ca
DATE: November 9, 2023
