Dora Prieto, Phillip Dwight Morgan, and Jess Goldman. (Photos courtesy the Writers’ Trust of Canada)

Three writers have been named the winners of the 2025 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers.

The award, established in 1994, grants $10,000 annually to a writer of fiction and poetry. It is administered by the Writers’ Trust of Canada. This year, the prize was also awarded to a writer of creative nonfiction for the first time since the category was added last year. The finalists were chosen from shortlists of three writers in each category.

Dora Prieto won the poetry award for “Loose Threads.” Prieto was a finalist for the award in 2023, and was a 2024 participant in the Writers’ Trust mentorship program. Her work was selected by a jury comprised of Dallas Hunt, Matt Rader, and Sanna Wani.

“Stitch by monostitch, ‘Loose Threads’ pulls at the warp and weft of culture, history, and language to show us where identity and poetry are formed,” the jury said in their citation. “Dora Prieto tests the integrity of poetry to hold what it promises against the gales of migration, gender, race, climate change, and the nation.”

Jess Goldman won the short fiction award for “Tombstone of a Tsaddik.” A jury comprised of Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Baharan Baniahmadi, and Shashi Bhat selected the finalists and winner from 172 submissions. “Jess Goldman’s risk-taking prose transcends to the level of magic, leading to an ending that defies both expectations and easy explanations,” the jury wrote in their citation.

Journalist, writer, and editor Phillip Dwight Morgan won the creative nonfiction award for “White Trucks and Mergansers,” a work that the jury wrote “renders the landscape of Point Pelee National Park both ‘striking and perilous’ with deft skill and an uncompromising eye.” A jury comprised of Omar Mouallem, Alessandra Naccarato, and Lindsay Wong selected Morgan as the winner from 108 submissions. “Through rigorous research and outstanding literary craft, he reveals a legacy of racialized violence, cross-species intimacies, and a symphony of migratory birds that refute borders,” the jury wrote in their citation.

The winners were announced at a June 2 ceremony in Toronto.