Awards / The QWF Literary Awards

The Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction

2021 submissions closed

Submissions are now closed. The shortlist will be announced in mid-October.

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Winners archive

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2020

Winner
Possess the Air: Love, Heroism, and the Battle for the Soul of Mussolini’s Rome (Biblioasis) by  Taras Grescoe

shortlisted

The Closet: The Eighteenth-Century Architecture of Intimacy (Princeton University Press) by  Danielle Bobker
The Audacity of His Enterprise: Louis Riel and the Métis Nation That Canada Never Was, 1840-1875 (McGill-Queen’s University Press) by  M. Max Hamon

Jury

Jeffrey Bachman
Sonja Boon
Kate Sterns

2019

Winner
The Ghost Garden (Random House Canada) by  Susan Doherty

shortlisted

The Organist (University of Regina Press) by  Mark Abley
nîtisânak (Metonymy Press) by  Lindsay Nixon

Jury

Mark Medley
Scott Moodie
Erin Wunker

2018

Winner
In Praise of Blood (Random House Canada) by  Judi Rever

shortlisted

Policing Black Lives: State Violence In Canada from Slavery to the Present (Fernwood Publishing) by  Robyn Maynard
Sitting Shiva on Minto Avenue, by ‘Toots’ (New Star Books) by  Erín Moure

Jury

Nigel Hunt
Marcello Di Cintio
Anne Lagacé Dowson

2017

Winner
Out Standing in the Field: A Memoir by Canada’s First Female Infantry Officer (Cormorant Books) by  Sandra Perron

shortlisted

Tax, Order, and Good Government: A New Political History of Canada, 1867 – 1917 (McGill-Queen's University Press) by  E.A. Heaman
The Commander: Fawzi al-Qawuqji and the Fight for Arab Independence, 1914 – 1948 (Farrar, Straus and Giroux) by  Laila Parsons

Jury

Chris Frey
Rod MacLeod
Rebecca Margolis

2016

Winner
A Field Guide to Lies: Critical Thinking in the Information Age (Allen Lane Canada, Penguin Random House Canada) by  Daniel J. Levitin

shortlisted

Shanghai Grand (HarperCollins Publishers Ltd) by  Taras Grescoe
Indigenous Writes (HighWater Press (an imprint of Portage & Main Press)) by  Chelsea Vowel

Jury

Andrea Bennett
Peter Knegt
Taylor Lambert

2015

Winner
Teaching Plato in Palestine: Philosophy in a Divided World (Princeton University Press) by  Carlos Fraenkel

shortlisted

The Permanent Nature of Everything: A Memoir (McGill-Queen's University Press) by  Judith Cowan
Boundless (House of Anansi Press) by  Kathleen Winter

Jury

Joan McGilvray
Bruce Symaka
Peter McFarlane

2014

Winner
The Morning After: The 1995 Quebec Referendum and the Day that Almost Was (Knopf Canada) by  Chantal Hébert with Jean Lapierre

shortlisted

The Bells of Memory (Linda Leith Publishing) by  Issa J. Boullata
The Alzheimer Conundrum: Entanglements of Dementia and Aging (Princeton University Press) by  Margaret Lock

Jury

Lars Lih
George Sipos
Felix von Geyer

2013

Winner
The Book of Immortality (Doubleday Canada) by  Adam Leith Gollner

shortlisted

Slouching Towards Sirte (Baraka Books) by  Maximillian Forte
The Water Here is Never Blue (Viking Canada) by  Shelagh Plunkett

Jury

Maya Khankhoje
Ken McGoogan
Larry Scanlan

2012

Winner
Straphanger (HarperCollins Canada) by  Taras Grescoe

shortlisted

Fools Rule: Inside the Failed Politics of Climate Change (Alfred A. Knopf Canada) by  William Marsden
Epistolophilia: Writing the Life of Ona Šimaitė (University of Nebraska Press) by  Julija Šukys

Jury

Gregory McCormick
Maria Meindl
Jan Walter

2011

Winner
Bad Animals: A Father’s Accidental Education in Autism (Viking Canada) by  Joel Yanofsky

shortlisted

They Fight Like Soldiers, They Die Like Children (Random House Canada) by  Roméo Dallaire
The Love Queen of Malabar: Memoir of a Friendship with Kamala Das (McGill-Queen's University Press) by  Merrily Weisbord

Jury

Denise Chong
Joshua Knelman
Denis Sampson

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