Winners of the 2023 BC and Yukon Book Prizes were announced at a gala in Vancouver on September 24.

Winners were selected in eight categories from the shortlisted titles announced earlier this year.

In addition to the eight category winners, two authors were honoured for their body of work and contributions to the literary community. Children’s author Robin Stevenson was named the recipient of the Lieutenant Governor’s Award for Literary Excellence, which recognizes a B.C. writer for their work and contributions to the province’s literary community. Yukon poet Katherine Munro was named the recipient of the Borealis Prize: The Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution.

The winners of the prizes are:

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize
Billy-Ray Belcourt, A Minor Chorus (Hamish Hamilton/Penguin Random House Canada)

Hubert Evans Nonfiction Prize
Karen Bakker, The Sounds of Life: How Digital Technology Is Bringing Us Closer to the Worlds of Animals and Plants (Princeton University Press)

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
Otoniya J. Okot Bitek, A is for Acholi (Wolsak & Wynn)

Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize
Cole Pauls, Kwändǖr (Conundrum Press)

Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize
Rachel Hartman, In the Serpent’s Wake (Penguin Teen Canada/Penguin Random House Canada)

Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize
Jessika Von Innerebner, That’s My Sweater! (Scholastic Canada)

Jim Deva Prize for Writing That Provokes
Michael J. Hathaway, What a Mushroom Lives For: Matsutake and the Worlds They Make (Princeton University Press)

Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award
Chief Robert Joseph, Namwayut: We Are All One: A Pathway to Reconciliation (Page Two Books)