The Writers’ Union of Canada announced today that Leila Marshy is the recipient of the $10,000 prize for the 29th annual Danuta Gleed Literary Award, recognizing the best first collection of short fiction by a Canadian author published in 2025 in the English language.
Of Leila Marshy’s book My Thievery of the People (Baraka Books), jury members Lisa Alward, Waubgeshig Rice, and Anuja Varghese, said: “A fierce and dazzling debut, My Thievery of the People scrutinizes the legacies of colonialism and patriarchy with an unflinching eye to the damage wreaked on both oppressed and oppressor. Travelling between the Middle East and North America, and assuming a breath-taking array of fictional modes, from naturalism to surrealism to magic realism, these tightly crafted stories are remarkable for the alchemy of Leila Marshy’s prose, slipping from the ordinary to the menacing in the blink of a sentence, and the moral complexity of her vision. Nowhere is this more evident than in her exquisite folk tale “Not Blood,” which reimagines the 1948 Nakba from the perspective of a Jewish settler community haunted by its original thievery.”
Leila Marshy is the daughter of a Palestinian refugee who went and married a Newfoundlander. She lived in Cairo before, during, and after the First Intifada and worked for the Palestinian Red Crescent and Medical Aid for Palestine. In Montreal, she has been a filmmaker, an app designer, a marketer, a baker, and a chicken farmer. In 2011, she founded a groundbreaking community group bringing Hasidic and non-Hasidic neighbours together in dialogue, and was campaign manager for the first Hasidic woman to hold office in the world.
Her first novel, The Philistine, was published in 2018 and is currently in development for a feature film. Last year, she published the anthology Razing Palestine: Punishing Solidarity and Dissent in Canada, with a foreword by Gabor Maté. Also published in 2025, My Thievery of the People is her first collection of short fiction, and was short listed for the Quebec Writers’ Federation Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction. She lives in Montreal.
Runners-up are Caitlin Galway and Mikka Jacobsen.
Of Caitlin Galway’s A Song for Wildcats (Rare Machines), the jury said: “The five long-form stories in A Song for Wildcats take us through time and across continents, from a dingy motel in Las Vegas, to Northern Ireland, to the Australian wilderness, to a small town on the Hudson River, to the windswept coast of Corsica. Galway evokes these historical settings with careful attention to detail that transports readers viscerally into each world unfolding on the page. Galway’s characters grapple with ghosts, grief, and the pitfalls of love and loyalty, with particularly strong explorations of queer desire in “The Lyrebird’s Bell” and the titular “A Song for Wildcats.” At once ambitious and intimate, lyrical and precise, each story offers a profound journey of the heart.”
Of Mikka Jacobsen’s Good Victory (Freehand Books), the jury said: “Set in the vast malls and frenzied McDonaldlands of a conventional nineties upbringing, Good Victory blends nostalgia — the toys, the clothes, the music — with wry humour and a gothic sensibility reminiscent of Shirley Jackson. An isolated preteen who can’t stop choking herself, two young sisters deserted by their father at Disneyland, a lonely graduate student grieving the death of a lab rat: in these haunting, layered stories, Mikka Jacobsen probes the hidden fears of her characters with insight and compassion, shining a light on the darkness that prowls around the edges of suburban family life. This collection introduces an exciting new voice in Canadian short fiction.”
The shortlist of five books was announced on May 7, 2026, and also included Catherine Hunter for Seeing You Home (Signature Editions) and Tracey Lindberg for The Cree Word for Love: Sâkihitowin (HarperAvenue). All shortlisted authors receive $1,000.
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.
To date, the award has presented more than $267,000 to writers and has recognized more than 145 first collections of short fiction for their excellence. The first recipient was Curtis Gillespie for The Progress of an Object in Motion. Other winners have included Carrianne Leung for That Time I Loved You, Zalika Reid-Benta for Frying Plantain, Jack Wang for We Two Alone, Arnolda Dufour Bowes for 20.12m: A Short Story Collection of a Life Lived as a Road Allowance Métis, Kim Fu for Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, Lisa Alward for Cocktail, and last year’s winner, Canisia Lubrin for Code Noir.
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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 almost 3,000 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. Learn more at writersunion.ca.
For additional information:
Siobhan O’Connor, Chief Operating Officer
The Writers’ Union of Canada
soconnor@writersunion.ca
DATE: June 11, 2026
