Canisia Lubrin (Rachel Eliza Griffiths)

Poet and author Canisia Lubrin has won the 2024 Danuta Gleed Award for Code Noir, her first collection of short fiction.

The $10,000 prize, administered by the Writers’ Union of Canada, is awarded annually to the best debut collection of short fiction written in English. Finalists Vincent Anioke and Nicola Winstanley each receive $1,000 for their books, Perfect Little Angels (Arsenal Pulp Press) and Smoke (Buckrider Books). The three authors were on a five-title shortlist announced in April. The winners were announced on June 5.

Code Noir, published by Knopf Canada, is the debut work of fiction for Lubrin, a Griffin Prize-winning poet and the poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart. Using as its basis the 59 articles set out in the 17th-century “Code Noir,” which defined the conditions of slavery in the French empire, the work is composed of 59 linked stories – written in varying styles – about characters determined to move free from the past. Earlier this spring, the book won the $150,000 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.

A jury comprised of Francine Cunningham, Kim Fu, and D.A. Lockhart called Code Noir “a thoughtful, insightful, experimental, pointed collection.”

“These stories show both tremendous heart and the skillful craft of its author, a masterful layering and blurring of history recorded and history lived,” the jury wrote. “This book will no doubt inspire other writers to delve deep, to be playful and bold, to challenge the reader and the status quo.”