The shortlists have been announced for the 2026 Manitoba Book Awards.

The six annual awards celebrating the best of books in the Prairie province are back after a two-year hiatus, with a new working board and provincial funding for three of the six awards – the Margaret Laurence Fiction Award, Prix Littéraire rue-Deschambault, and the Alexander Kennedy Ibister Award for Nonfiction. The other awards will be sponsored by various contributors.

The shortlists are dominated by titles from independent Canadian publishers, with three books – Zilla Jones’s The World So Wide, R. Y. Abdulrehman’s Jinn in the Family, and Catherine Hunter’s Seeing You Home – receiving nominations for two awards.

Jurors read 42 submitted titles across the six categories to select the shortlisted titles.

The awards will be presented at a ceremony in Winnipeg on Sept. 19 hosted by retired CBC broadcaster Shelagh Rogers.

The shortlisted titles are:

Eileen McTavish Sykes Award for Best First Book

• The Broken Detective by Joel Nedecky (Run Amok Books)
• Wavelength by Cale Plett (Groundwood Books)
• The World So Wide by Zilla Jones (Cormorant Books)

Carol Shields Winnipeg Book Award

• Founding Folks: An Oral History of the Winnipeg Folk Festival by Kevin Nikkel (University of Manitoba Press)
• Jinn in the Family by R. Y. Abdulrehman (Lead With Diversity Press)
• Seeing You Home by Catherine Hunter (Signature Editions)
• That’ll Never Work Here: Challenging the Myths Around Biking in a Winter City; The City Project, Book 2 by Patty Wiens (Great Plains Press)

Le prix littéraire Rue-Deschambault

• Pauline Boutal, entre les toiles et les planches by Lise Gaboury-Diallo (Les Éditions du Blé)
• Poésie franco-ouestienne, 1974–2024 by J.R. Léveillé (Les Éditions du Blé)
• Sous les tilleuls by Bertrand Nayet (Les Éditions du Blé)

Alexander Kennedy Isbister Award For Non-Fiction

• Heal the Beasts: A Jaunt Through the Curious History of the Veterinary Arts by Philipp Schott (ECW Press)
• The Dollar A Year Men: How the Best Business Brains in Canada Helped to Win the Second World War by Allan Levine (Barlow Books)
• Seeking Spirit: A Vietnamese (Non)Buddhist Memoir by Linda Trinh (MiroLand/Guernica Editions)
• Living Language Rights: Constitutional Pathways to Indigenous Language Education by Lorena Sekwan Fontaine (University of Manitoba Press)

Lansdowne Prize for Poetry

• Acutely Life by Sue Sorensen (At Bay Press)
• Goose by Melanie Dennis Unrau (Assembly Press)
• Il n’y aura pas de safety word by Dominique Hétu (Hurlantes éditrices)
• Scientific Marvel by Chimwemwe Undi (House of Anansi Press)
• What Fills Your House Like Smoke by E. McGregor (Thistledown Press)

Margaret Laurence Award for Fiction

• Jinn in the Family by R. Y. Abdulrehman (Lead With Diversity Press)
• Seeing You Home by Catherine Hunter (Signature Editions)
• The World So Wide by Zilla Jones (Cormorant Books)