l: 2026 Nova Scotia Book Awards winners; r: 2026 Atlantic Book Awards winners

The winners of the Nova Scotia Book Awards and Atlantic Book Awards were announced at the Atlantic Book Festival on June 1 and 4.

The awards, which celebrate Atlantic and Nova Scotian writing and publishing, were celebrated at a time when book publishing in Nova Scotia is being squeezed by the obliteration of funding to the industry announced by the provincial government at the end of February.

The winners of the Nova Scotia Book Awards were announced at a ceremony in Dartmouth, N.S., on June 1. The winners of the Atlantic Book Awards were announced on June 4, at an event at the Halifax Central Library.

In addition to the eight writing awards, The Atlantic Independent Booksellers Readers’ Choice Award was announced as part of the Atlantic Book Awards, as was the APMA Best Atlantic-Published Book Award.

Author and educator Stephen Kimber was honoured with the Atlantic Legacy Award for his career and contributions to building Atlantic Canada’s literary scene. A three-time winner of the Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award, Kimber’s career has spanned more than five decades. He has published 10 works of nonfiction and two novels, with a third to be published this fall.

The awards are collectively worth more than $60,000.

The winners of the Nova Scotia Book Awards are:

Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction

• Five Seasons of Charlie Francis by Danica Roache (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)

Evelyn Richardson Non-Fiction Award

• The Golden Daughter by Halina St. James (House of Anansi Press)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Fiction

• Five Seasons of Charlie Francis by Danica Roache (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)

Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, Non-Fiction

• Service and Sacrifice: Extraordinary Nova Scotians in the Great War by Ken Hynes (Nimbus Publishing)

The winners of the Atlantic Book Awards are:

Alistair MacLeod Award for Short Fiction

• Here by Heidi Wicks (Breakwater Books)

Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children’s Literature

• The Newest Gnome by Lauren Soloy (Tundra Books/Penguin Random House Canada)

J. M. Abraham Atlantic Poetry Award

• Future Howl by Sue Goyette (Gaspereau Press)

Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award

• milktooth by Jaime Burnet (Vagrant Press/Nimbus Publishing)

Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award

• Goose Lane Editions for Erica Rutherford: Her Lives and Works | Ses vies, ses œuvres  by Pan Wendt

The Atlantic Independent Booksellers Readers’ Choice Award 

• The Austen by Sarah Emsley (Pottersfield Press)