The Writers’ Trust of Canada has announced that authors Michael Christie, Christy Ann Conlin, and Tracey Lindberg will serve as the three-person jury for this year’s Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Now in its 21st year, the annual prize offers a $25,000 purse to a Canadian author for an exceptional English-language novel or short-story collection.
Christie, based on Galiano Island, B.C., was shortlisted for the 2011 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize for his story collection, The Beggar’s Garden, which won the Vancouver Book Award. His novel, If I Fall, If I Die, was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2015.
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, writer Conlin was a finalist for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and the Dartmouth Book Award for her debut novel, Heave. She teaches creative writing through the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies.
Lindberg, a citizen of As’in’i’wa’chi Ni’yaw Nation, is the author of the novel Birdie, which was shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writers Prize, and was a contender on the 2016 edition of CBC’s Canada Reads. She teaches Indigenous Law at the University of Ottawa.
A shortlist of five finalists – each of whom will receive $2,500 – will be revealed on Sept. 27, with the winner announced at the Writers’ Trust Awards ceremony on Nov. 14 at Toronto’s Glenn Gould Studio.