Journey Prize

The Journey Prize (officially called The Writers' Trust of Canada McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize) is a Canadian literary award, presented annually by McClelland and Stewart and the Writers' Trust of Canada for the best short stories published by an emerging writer in a Canadian literary magazine. The award was endowed by James A. Michener, who donated the Canadian royalty earnings from his 1988 novel Journey.^[1]

From the award's inception until 2023, a single story was named the winner and received CA$10,000, making it the largest monetary award given in Canada to an up-and-coming writer for a short story or excerpt from a fiction work-in-progress. Since 2023, the award no longer select a single prize winners, and instead all of the 10 writers whose stories are selected for inclusion in the anthology are considered equal winners of the award and receive $1,000 each in prize money.

The prize's winner in 2000, Timothy Taylor, was the first writer ever to have three stories nominated for the award in the same year.^[2]

The Journey Prize also publishes an annual anthology of the year's longlisted short stories. Two writers, Andrew MacDonald and David Bergen, have both had a record four total stories selected for inclusion in the annual anthology.

In 2020, the Journey Prize committee announced that the upcoming award would be a special edition devoted exclusively to Black Canadian writers, considering stories published in multiple years.^[3] Although the initial report was that the special Black Canadian edition of the award would be presented in 2021 for stories published in 2019, 2020 and 2021,^[3] the organizers instead paused the award for 2021 and 2022, and presented a special Black Canadian award in early 2023 to honour works published since 2020.^[4]

In 2024, the 25th anniversary of the awards was marked with a special retrospective anthology, edited by Alexander MacLeod and Souvankham Thammavongsa, compiling selected winning and nominated stories from throughout the history of the awards.

Winners and nominees

1980s

Year	Author	Title	Ref
1989	Holley Rubinsky	"Rapid Transits"	[5]

1990s

Year	Author	Title	Ref
1990	Cynthia Flood	"My Father Took a Cake to France"	[6]
1991	Yann Martel	"The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios"	[7]
	Diana Hartog	"Theories of Grief"	[8]
	Diane Keating	"The Salem Letters"	[8]
1992	Rozena Maart	"No Rosa, No District Six"	[9]
	Steven Heighton	"How Beautiful Upon the Mountains"	[10]
	Diane Juttner Perreault	"Bella's Story"	[10]
1993	Gayla Reid	"Sister Doyle's Men"	[11]
	Marina Endicott	"With the Band"	[12]
	Carol Windley	"The Etruscans"	[12]
1994	Melissa Hardy	"Long Man the River"	[13]
	Anne Carson	"Water Margins"	[14]
	Robert Mullen	"Anomie"	[14]
1995	Kathryn Woodward	"Of Marranos and Gilded Angels"	[15]
	Gabriella Goliger	"Song of Ascent"	[16]
	Elizabeth Hay	"Hand Games"	[16]
1996	Elyse Gasco	"Can You Wave Bye Bye, Baby?"	[17]
	Danuta Gleed	"Bones"	[17]
	Rick Maddocks	"Lessons from the Sputnik Diner"	[17]
1997	Gabriella Goliger	"Maladies of the Inner Ear"	[18]
	Anne Simpson	"Dreaming Snow"	[18]
	Mark Anthony Jarman	"Speedboat"	[18]
1998	John Brooke	"The Finer Points of Apples"	[19]
	Ian Colford	"The Reason for the Dream"	[20]
	Stephen Guppy	"Downwind"	[20]
1999	Alissa York	"The Back of the Bear’s Mouth"	[21]

2000s

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
2000	Timothy Taylor	"Doves of Townsend"	[2]
2001	Kevin Armstrong	"The Cane Field"	[22]
	Vivette J. Kady	"Anything That Wiggles"	[23]
	Heather O'Neill	"Little Suitcase"	[23]
2002	Jocelyn Brown	"Miss Canada"	[24]
	Geoffrey Brown	"Listen"	[25]
	Neil Smith	"Green Fluorescent Protein"	[25]
2003	Jessica Grant	"My Husband’s Jump"	[26]
	Dawn Rae Downton	"Hansel and Gretel"	[27]
	Charlotte Gill	"Hush"	[27]
2004	Devin Krukoff	"The Last Spark"	[28]
	Kenneth Bonert	"Packers and Movers"	[29]
	Elaine McCluskey	"The Watermelon Social"	[29]
2005	Matt Shaw	"Matchbook for a Mother's Hair"	[30]
	Krista Bridge	"A Matter of Firsts"	[31]
	Barbara Romanik	"Seven Ways to Chandigarh"	[31]
2006	Heather Birrell	"BriannaSusannaAlana"	[32]
	Lee Henderson	"Conjugation"	[33]
	Martin West	"Cretacea"	[33]
2007	Craig Boyko	"Ozy"	[34]
	Krista Foss	"Swimming in Zanzibar"	[35]
	Rebecca Rosenblum	"Chilly Girl"	[35]
2008	Saleema Nawaz	"My Three Girls"	[36]
	Dana Mills	"Steaming for Godthab"	[37]
	Clea Young	"Chaperone"	[37]
2009	Yasuko Thanh	"Floating Like the Dead"	[38]
	Daniel Griffin	"The Last Great Works of Alvin Cale"	[39]
	Dave Margoshes	"The Wisdom of Solomon"	[39]

2010s

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
2010	Devon Code	"Uncle Oscar"	[40]
	Krista Foss	"The Longitude of Okay"	[41]
	Lynne Kutsukake	"Mating"	[41]
2011	Miranda Hill	"Petitions to Saint Chronic"	[42]
	Seyward Goodhand	"The Fur Trader's Daughter"	[43]
	Ross Klatte	"First-Calf Heifer"	[43]
2012	Alex Pugsley	"Crisis on Earth-X"	[44]
	Kevin Hardcastle	"To Have to Wait"	[45]
	Andrew Hood	"Manning"	[45]
2013	Naben Ruthnum	"Cinema Rex"	[46]
	Doretta Lau	"How Does a Single Blade of Grass Thank the Sun?"	[47]
	Eliza Robertson	"My Sister Sang"	[47]
2014	Tyler Keevil	"Sealskin"	[48]
	Lori McNulty	"Monsoon Season"	[48]
	Clea Young	"Juvenile"	[48]
2015	Deirdre Dore	"The Wise Baby"	[49]
	Emily Bossé	"Last Animal Standing on Gentleman’s Farm"	[50]
	Anna Ling Kaye	"Red Egg and Ginger"	[50]
2016	Colette Langlois	"The Emigrants"	[51]
	Charlie Fiset	"If I Ever See the Sun"	[52]
	J. R. McConvey	"How the Grizzly Came to Hang in the Royal Oak Hotel"	[52]
2017	Sharon Bala	"Butter Tea at Starbucks"	[53]
	Darlene Naponse	"She Is Water"	[53]
2018	Shashi Bhat	"Mute"	[54]
	Greg Brown	"Love"	[55]
	Liz Harmer	"Never Prosper"	[55]
2019	Angélique Lalonde	"Pooka"	[56]
	Kai Conradi	"Every True Artist"	[57]
	Samantha Jude Macpherson	"The Fish and the Dragons"	[57]

2020s

Year	Author	Title	Ref.
2020	Jessica Johns	"Bad Cree"	[58]
	Lisa Foad	"Hunting"	[59]
	David Huebert	"Chemical Valley"
2021	No award presented
2022	No award presented
2023	Christina Cooke		[60]
	A. Z. Farah
	Zilla Jones
	Sarah Kabamba
	Terese Mason Pierre
	Téa Mutonji
	Lue Palmer
	Jasmine Sealy
	Dianah Smith
	Iryn Tushabe