Meet the winners of the 2025 B.C. and Yukon Book Prizes

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The West Coast Book Prize Society has announced 2025 winners of the B.C. and Yukon Book Prizes.

Started in 1985, the annual prizes recognize the achievements of B.C. and Yukon authors, illustrators and publishers. Award winners are selected through a juried system, with five finalists in each prize category. These prize-winning authors and publishers were honoured Sept. 21 at a gala hosted by broadcaster Margaret Gallagher at the University Golf Club in Vancouver.

The winners of the B.C. and Yukon Book Prizes are:

Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize 
Shashi Bhat (Vancouver), Death by a Thousand Cuts: Stories (McClelland and Stewart)

Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize
Minelle Mahtani (Vancouver), May It Have a Happy Ending: A Memoir of Finding My Voice as My Mother Lost Hers (Doubleday Canada)

Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize 
Leanne Dunic (Vancouver), wet (Talonbooks)

Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize 
Terri-Lynn Williams-Davidson with Robert Davidson (Haida Gwaii and Vancouver), A Haida Wedding (Heritage House Publishing)

Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize 
Li Charmaine Anne (Vancouver), Crash Landing (Annick Press)

Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize
Julie Morstad (Vancouver), A Face Is a Poem (Tundra Books)

Jim Deva Prize for Writing that Provokes 
Sarah Leavitt (Vancouver), Something, Not Nothing: A Story of Grief and Love (Arsenal Pulp Press)

Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award

Dana Claxton and Dr. Curtis Collins (Vancouver and Whistler), Curve!: Women Carvers on the Northwest Coast (Figure 1 Publishing)

Two additional awards were also given to writers for “their body of work and contributions to the literary community.”

The Lieutenant-governor’s Award for Literary Excellence was given to poet and Governor General’s Award winner Vancouver’s Fred Wah. A former Parliamentary Poet Laureate and an Officer of the Order of Canada Wah is best known for his book Diamond Grill, a biofiction about a small-town Chinese Canadian café. His poetry collection, is a door, was awarded the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 2020.

The Borealis Prize: The Commissioner of Yukon Award for Literary Contribution was given to Linda Johnson.

The recipient of the Borealis Prize is “recognized as having spent significant time living and working among the writing community in the Yukon,” and making substantial contributions, through writing, publishing, community organizing, Indigenous writing and storytelling, to the Yukon writing and publishing community. An historian and archivist, Johnson has lived and worked in the traditional territories of Yukon First Nations since 1974.