Amazon Canada and The Walrus have announced the finalists for the 2023 Amazon Canada First Novel Award.

The annual $60,000 prize for a debut novel is in its 47th year. Each of the five shortlisted authors will receive $6,000, with the winner to be announced on May 31 at an in-person event at which previous winner Michelle Good will be appearing as a guest speaker.

The finalists are:

• A Minor Chorus, Billy-Ray Belcourt (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
• In The City Of Pigs, André Forget (Rare Machines/Dundurn Press)
• Bad Cree, Jessica Johns (HarperCollins)
• Hollow Bamboo, William Ping (HarperCollins)
• The Island of Forgetting, Jasmine Sealy (HarperCollins)
• In the Upper Country, Kai Thomas (Viking Canada)

The shortlisted books were selected by a jury comprised of authors Sharon Bala, Kim Fu, Heather O’Neill, and Zalika Reid-Benta.

“These six shortlisted books represent, to me, the beauty, breadth, innovation, risk, reckoning, and reinvention happening in Canadian literature right now. Each one is a tremendous achievement,” Fu said in a press release.