Three authors have been named to the shortlist of the 70th annual Leacock Medal, honouring Canadian literary humour.

Gary Barwin is shortlisted for his Scotiabank Giller Prize–nominated Yiddish for Pirates (Random House Canada), a tale of a young Jewish pirate told from the perspective of a 500-year-old parrot.

Amy Jones is a finalist for We’re All in This Together (McClelland & Stewart), her debut novel about how a family copes after one of their members goes over a waterfall in a barrel – and the video evidence of the feat goes viral.

Drew Hayden Taylor was listed for his short-fiction collection Take Us to Your Chief (Douglas & McIntyre), which turns genre conventions on their heads and approaches topics of First Nations representation, armageddon, and aliens with humour and absurdity.

The finalists were selected from a longlist culled from nearly 70 submissions. The medal and $15,000 prize will be presented an a gala on June 10.