Fourteen Canadian authors have been named to the 2025 Giller Prize longlist, the Giller Foundation announced Monday, as the prestigious literary award continues to operate under the shadow of a severe financial crisis that threatens its future. The Giller Prize awards $100,000 annually to a Canadian author of a novel, graphic novel or short story collection published in English, and $10,000 to each of the finalists.

The 14 titles were selected from more than 100 books submitted by publishers across Canada. Notable authors on the longlist include three former Giller winners: André Alexis, for his short story collection Other Worlds (McClelland & Stewart); Souvankham Thammavongsa, for her novel Pick a Colour (Knopf Canada); and Ian Williams for You've Changed (Random House Canada).

Other longlisted titles include Mona Awad's We Love You, Bunny (Scribner Canada), Kirti Bhadresa's An Astonishment of Stars (ECW Press), Otoniya J. Okot Bitek's We, The Kindling (Alchemy By Knopf Canada), Eddy Boudel Tan's The Tiger and the Cosmonaut (Viking Canada), Fanny Britt's Sugaring Off (Book*hug Press), Joanna Cockerline's Still (The Porcupine's Quill), Emma Donoghue's The Paris Express (Harper Avenue), Holly Kennedy's The Sideways Life of Denny Voss (Lake Union Publishing), Emma Knight's The Life Cycle of the Common Octopus (Viking Canada), Amanda Leduc's Wild Life (Random House Canada), and Bindu Suresh's The Road Between Us (Assembly Press).

Four of the titles on the list are by independent publishers, with seven titles coming from Penguin Random House Canada imprints, one from Amazon-owned Lake Union, and one each from imprints of Simon & Schuster and HarperCollins.

The jury panel is chaired by fiction author and University of Notre Dame creative writing professor Dionne Irving, whose novel The Islands was previously a Giller Prize finalist. Joining Irving are authors Loghan Paylor, whose debut novel The Cure for Drowning was longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize, and Deepa Rajagopalan, whose short story collection Peacocks of Instagram was shortlisted for the 2024 prize.

The jury praised the selected works for depicting "a Canada and a world that's compelling, dangerous, and simultaneously compassionate and inviting," noting that "these works illuminate the everyday and the otherworldly, considering what it means to be human in these funny, sad, joyful, and complicated times."

The longlist announcement follows the Giller Foundation's decision to end its two-decade sponsorship with Scotiabank earlier this year amid controversies over the bank's investment ties to an Israeli arms manufacturer, which included protests from authors, many of whom boycotted submitting their books for the prize in the past several years.

Without stable funding, the foundation said it would be forced to cease operations by the end of 2025 and has sought $5 million in federal government funding over three years to continue. The request has been heavily criticized by the publishing community, which itself has long lobbied the government to add additional revenue to the Canada Book Fund, which has been fixed at CAD $39 million for over 20 years. Government funding for the foundation is widely viewed as elitist and exclusionary, with critics arguing that it ultimately supports a small handful of titles and authors, rather than the larger publishing community.

Today’s announcement also follows the recent withdrawal of criminal charges against Rachelle Friesen, the final protester to be arrested for disrupting the 2023 Giller Prize broadcast. Five protesters were arrested in connection with the disruption, with four having their charges dropped in late 2024.

The shortlist will be announced on October 6 and the prize will be awarded on November 17.