Titles from independent Canadian publishers dominate this year’s shortlists for the Trillium Book Award.

The shortlists, announced today by Ontario Creates, include 13 books in French and English across three categories. The French poetry award will not be awarded this year due to an insufficient number of entries.

The annual awards, now in their 37th year, recognize literary excellence in Ontario’s writers who work in both French and English. Winning authors of the Trillium Book Award receive $20,000, while winning poets of the Trillium Book Award for Poetry receive $10,000. Publishers of the winning titles receive support to promote and market the winning books. Previous winners include Stuart Ross, Souvankham Thammavongsa, and Dionne Brand.

The winners will be announced on June 20.

 Trillium Book Award

• Sleep is Now a Foreign Country: Encounters with the Uncanny by Mike Barnes (Biblioasis)
• The Clarion by Nina Dunic (Invisible Publishing)
• North of Middle Island by D.A. Lockhart (Kegedonce Press)
• Anecdotes by Kathryn Mockler (Book*hug Press)
• River Mumma by Zalika Reid-Benta (Penguin Canada/Penguin Random House Canada)

Prix Trillium

• La fin de nos programmes by Martin Bélanger (Del Busso éditeur)
• Plonge, Freya, vole! by Andrée Christensen (Les Éditions David)
• L’aurore martyrise l’enfant by David Ménard (Éditions L’Interligne)
• Le parfum de la baleine by Paul Ruban (Flammarion Québec)
• Vivre ou presque by Nicolas Weinberg (Éditions L’Interligne)

Trillium Book Award for Poetry

• Wires that Sputter by Britta Badour (McClelland & Stewart/PRHC)
• More Sure by A. Light Zachary (Arsenal Pulp Press)
• Continuity Errors by Catriona Wright (Coach House Books)