CBC Books, CBC’s online home for literary content, together with its partners the Canada Council for the Arts and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, have announced the finalists for the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize.
Five finalists have been chosen from more than 1,300 entries from across the country.
The Finalists are:
- Summer Ash by Rachel Foster (Vancouver)
- The Invisible Woman by Laura MacGregor (Waterloo, Ont.)
- The First Apartment by Jennifer McGuire (Owen Sound, Ont.)
- Cancer Stage Exit 4: A Memoir by Lena Palacios (Montreal)
- In Case I Die by Crystal Semaganis (Bear Island, Ont.)
The entries were selected from more than 1,300 submissions received from across Canada. The public can read the shortlisted entries on cbcbooks.ca. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced on Thursday, September 25.
The four other finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and will be published on CBC Books.
The 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize Jurors
The 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize jurors are Zoe Whittall, Danny Ramadan and Helen Knott.
- Zoe Whittall is an Ontario-based author, poet and screenwriter. She has received the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Award and has been shortlisted for the Giller Prize. Her memoir No Credit River was published in 2024. Danny Ramadan is a Vancouver-based Syrian-Canadian author and advocate for 2SLGBTQ+ refugees. Ramadan’s latest memoir Crooked Teeth was a finalist in the nonfiction category of the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Awards. Helen Knott is a Dane Zaa, Cree, Métis and mixed settler-descent writer from Prophet River First Nations in B.C. Knott’s memoir Becoming a Matriarch was a finalist in the nonfiction category of the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Awards.
The Grand Prize winner will receive a cash prize of $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and will be published on the CBC Books website. The four other finalists will each receive $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts and will be published on CBC Books.
Visit cbcbooks.ca for the complete CBC Nonfiction Prize shortlist or for more information on the CBC Literary Prizes.