Giller Prize shortlist names five novelists, including Michelle Good and debut author Patmeena Sabit

Five novels are in the running for the 2026 Giller Prize, the $100,000 award for the year’s best Canadian fiction. The finalists, announced Monday in Toronto, are Tara Gereaux for Wild People Quiet, Michelle Good for Eliza Sunshine, Nicholas Herring for Your Breath in Charcoal, Nazanine Hozar for The Small Ones and Patmeena Sabit for Good People, according to the Giller Prize announcement. The prize said the list spans five publishing imprints and four provinces and includes three national bestsellers.

The shortlist was whittled down from a 14-book longlist released on Sept. 8, which itself came from more than 140 titles submitted by publishers across the country, the prize says on its 2026 finalists page. This year’s nine-member jury is made up entirely of independent booksellers. The Globe and Mail reported that it is the first time the panel has not been mostly authors, and that the jurors represent seven provinces and one territory. The winner takes home $100,000 and each of the other finalists receives $10,000.

Good is the only finalist who has been recognized by the prize before. The Cree author, a member of Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, was longlisted in 2020 for her debut, Five Little Indians, which went on to win the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and Canada Reads in 2022, CBC Books reported. Her new novel follows three generations of Cree women. Speaking to the Globe about the loss of the buffalo, which the book considers, she said: “Just imagine everything gone, all of a sudden.”

Gereaux, a Regina-based citizen of the Métis Nation-Saskatchewan who has worked as a writer and story editor in film and television, is nominated for a novel set in 1946 Saskatchewan. It follows a Métis woman passing as white in a small prairie town whose carefully built life starts to come apart when she learns of government plans to force the Métis off their land, according to the prize’s summary.

Herring, a fisherman and carpenter from Murray Harbour, P.E.I., is on the list for his second novel, a comic road trip in which a directionless Islander picks up an acquaintance’s brother from a mental health hospital in northern New Brunswick before the pair head to Toronto. His first book, Some Hellish, won the 2022 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Hozar, who was born in Tehran and lives in Vancouver, is nominated for The Small Ones, about children turned into soldiers and martyrs during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s.

Sabit is the only first-time novelist among the finalists. Born in Kabul and now living in Toronto, she grew up in Virginia after her family fled Afghanistan, and spent 10 years on Good People, the Globe reported. The book tells the story of a refugee family in a wealthy Virginia gated community through the accounts of the people around them after a tragedy. CBC Books said the novel won the 2026 Westport Prize for Literature.

“The books selected by this year’s jury are incandescent,” said Elana Rabinovitch, the prize’s executive director, in the announcement. “These five books represent Canadian fiction – daring, original, textured and thought-provoking – at its finest.” Readers who want to hear from the authors can attend Between the Pages events at the Calgary Central Library on Oct. 28, the National Arts Centre in Ottawa on Nov. 2, the Halifax Central Library on Nov. 4 and Toronto’s Isabel Bader Theatre on Nov. 13. The shortlisted books are also available in accessible formats for print-disabled Canadians through the National Network for Equitable Library Services and the Centre for Equitable Library Access.

Rick Mercer will host the winner’s ceremony in downtown Toronto on Monday, Nov. 16, airing at 9 p.m. ET (11:30 p.m. AT, midnight NT) on CBC TV and CBC Gem, with a stream on CBC’s YouTube channel and a special on CBC Radio. This is the prize’s 33rd year. The prize cut ties with former sponsor Scotiabank in 2025 and is now backed by a multi-year $4-million gift from the Hilary and Galen Weston Foundation, CBC reported. Last year’s prize went to Souvankham Thammavongsa for Pick a Colour.

Sources: Giller Prize 2026 shortlist announcement; Giller Prize 2026 finalists page; CBC Books; The Globe and Mail.