Lyse Doucet, Marc Bendavid, and Marcus Kliewer won the 2026 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer prizes.

The winners of the $20,000 2026 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize were announced on June 24.

The winner in the nonfiction category was Lyse Doucet’s A People’s History of Afghanistan (Allen Lane/Penguin Random House Canada), which recently won the 2026 Women’s Prize for Non-Fiction in the U.K.

Marc Bendavid won the Emerging Writer Prize for fiction for his novel The Sapling (Scribner Canada/Simon & Schuster), and Marcus Kliewer was named winner in the speculative fiction category for We Used to Live Here (Emily Bestler Books/Simon & Schuster).

The annual prize recognizes the best debut books by Canadian writers in three categories: nonfiction, literary fiction, and this year, speculative fiction. The genre fiction category changes yearly, alternating between romance, mystery, and speculative fiction. Each prize comes with a $20,000 award and dedicated promotional support.

The judges for the prizes were Kate Harris for the nonfiction category, Souvankham Thammavongsa for literary fiction, and Natalie Zina Walschots for the speculative fiction category.