The finalists for the 2024 Alberta Literary Awards were announced by The Writers’ Guild of Alberta in early April.

The winners will be announced at the Alberta Literary Awards Gala on June 8, during the annual WGA Conference in Edmonton. In addition to these awards, Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize and The City of Calgary W.O. Mitchell Book Prize shortlists were announced separately.

The shortlisted titles are:

R. Ross Annett Award for Children’s Literature (Chapter Books)

• Kate A. Boorman, Into the Sublime (Square Fish/Macmillamn Publishers)
• Natasha Deen, The Signs and Wonders of Tuna Rashad (Running Press Kids)
• Dee Hahn, The Grave Thief (Puffin Canada/PRHC)

Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction

• Jessica Johns, Bad Cree (HarperCollins)
• Thomas Wharton, Book of Rain (Random House Canada)
• Deborah Willis, Girlfriend on Mars (Hamish Hamilton/PRHC)

Wilfrid Eggleston Award for Nonfiction

• David Laurence Jones, New World Dreams: Canadian Pacific Railway and the Golden Northwest (Heritage House)
• Paul McKendrick, Scrubbing the Sky: Inside the Race to Cool the Planet (Figure 1 Publishing)
• Alexandra Zabjek, We Need to Do This: A History of the Women’s Shelter Movement in Alberta and the Alberta Council of Women’s Shelters  (LCR Publishing Services/University of Calgary Press)

Memoir Award

• Cecile Beaulieu, Brother Broken (FriesenPress)
• Charlotte Bellows, The Definition of Beautiful (Freehand Books)
• Jennifer Bowering-Delisle, Micrographia (Gordon Hill Press)

Short Story Collection

• Astrid Blodgett, This is How You Start to Disappear (University of Alberta Press)
• Idman Nur Omar, Private Apartments (House of Anansi Press)
• Premee Mohamed, No one will come back for us (Undertow Publications)

Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Book of Poetry

• Alice Major, Knife on Snow (Turnstone Press)
• Natalie Meisner, It Begins in Salt (Frontenac House)
• Juleta Severson-Baker, Antecedent (Frontenac House)

Gwen Pharis Ringwood Award for Drama

• Caleigh Crow, There is Violence and There is Righteous Violence and There is Death, or the Born Again Crow (Playwrights Canada Press)
• Mieko Ouch, Burning Mom (Playwrights Canada Press)
• Josée Thibeault, La fille du facteur (Les Éditions du Blé)

James H. Gray Awards for Short Nonfiction

• paulo da costa, The Stones that Anchor Us (Queens Quarterly)
• Patti Edgar, Ascending in a Hotel Conference Room (The Dalhousie Review)
• Thomas Wharton, Cat Fox Neutrino (Hazlitt)

Howard O’Hagan Short Story Award

• Katherine Abbass, Fred (The Malahat Review)
• Astrid Blodgett, How to Read Water (University of Alberta Press)
• Ben Lof, The Care Bears (The Malahat Review)

Jon Whyte Memorial Unpublished Essay Award

• Antoinette Bekker, The Sensibilities of Dogs
• Marcello Di Cintio, Desconocido
• Julie Sedivy, Prosthesis

• Anna Marie Sewell, Urbane (Stonehouse Publishing)
• Jennifer Bowering Delisle, Micrographia (Gordon Hill Press)
• Richard Van Camp, The Spirit of Denendeh: As I Enfold You in Petals (HighWater Press/Portage & Main Press)

• Jann Arden, The Bittlemores (Random House Canada)
• Clem Martini, Cantata and The Extinction Therapist (UpRoute/Durvile Publications)
• Natalie Meisner, It Begins in Salt (Frontenac House)