Two writers have been shortlisted for the 2025 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction.

The finalists, announced on Nov. 7 by Wilfrid Laurier University, are both titles from indie publishers – on the West and East coasts.

The $10,000 prize recognizes Canadian writers for a first or second work of creative nonfiction with a Canadian locale or significance.

The finalists are:

• Martin Bauman, Hell of a Ride: Chasing Home and Survival on a Bicycle Voyage Across Canada (Pottersfield Press)
  
• Aaron Williams, The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era (Harbour Publishing)

Hell of a Ride is a debut book by Halifax-based journalist and mental health advocate Martin Bauman (named as an “emergent” nonfiction writer by the RBC Taylor Prize in 2020) that tells of his cross-Canada bike ride to raise awareness about depression even as he avoided dealing with his own history and mental health.

Aaron Williams, also Halifax-based, is a third-generation B.C. logger who chronicles his return to Haida Gwaii and the changes in the archipelago where the logging industry is increasingly unwelcome. The Last Logging Show is Williams’s second book; his first, Chasing Smoke, was based on his experience fighting forest fires across Canada.

Established and endowed by the late writer and journalist Edna Staebler, the nonfiction prize is administered by Wilfred Laurier University.

The winner will be announced in early December with an award ceremony to follow in spring 2026 at Wilfred Laurier in Waterloo, Ontario.