Endling wins Amazon’s $60K first novel prize

Ukraine-born, Vancouver-based author Maria Reva has landed another prize for her debut novel Endling, which follows a snail scientist in Ukraine who teams up with a pair of sisters to break up a mail-order bride operation in the country before Russia’s invasion throws them all for a loop.

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Reva’s novel, which was published in June 2025 and released in paperback in May 2026, won the $60,000 Amazon Canada First Novel Award at a June 4 ceremony in Toronto which revealed the winner. Endling also won Reva the $60,000 Writers’ Trust Atwood Gibson Fiction Prize, was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and was long-listed for the Booker Prize.

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On Thursday at 6:30 p.m., retired Concordia University film and sexuality scholar Thomas Waugh will be at the Cornish Library (20 West Gate) to read from his memoir Writing in the Flesh: Essays on My Lives, My Bodies, My Families, My Place, My Movies, published in December 2025 by McGill-Queen’s University Press.

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Waugh’s book chronicles his life as the child of a preacher, his coming-out experience as a baby boomer, the queer communities he discovered in a range of cities, the Canadian queer cinema scene and more.

Registration is required to attend Waugh’s launch, which can be done at wfp.to/iMV.

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The winners of this year’s annual Dave Williamson National Short Story Competition, also known as the Dave, were announced at a June 4 event held in conjunction with the Manitoba Writers’ Guild and the Manitoba Arts Council.

Top spot went to Saskatoon’s Daria Tenold for the story The Wound, with second place snagged by Winnipeg’s Tobi Menard for Mourning Rites and third place going to Lynda Williams of Calgary for Closer Inspection. Authors Shane Arroway, Adriana Danaila, Christy Jordan-Fenton and Gwen Smid all received honourable mentions.

The entries by all seven authors will be published in the Manitoba Writers’ Guild’s Beyond Boundaries anthology.

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After hearing from poets and other members of the literary community, the Griffin Poetry Prize has tweaked the awards given out annually.

Until 2022, the Griffin Poetry Prize offered a $65,000 prize to a Canadian poet’s work, with another $65,000 for an international poet. That year, organizers opted to shift to one $130,000 prize awarded to a Canadian or international poet.

Since making the changes in 2022, no Canadian poet had won the Griffin; this year’s prize was awarded to American author Kevin Young, and no Canadians were on the 2026 long list.

Going forward, the prize will revert to the two $65,000 prizes and will keep both the $10,000 Canadian First Book prize for a work in English as well as the $25,000 lifetime achievement award.

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Mystery maven Louise Penny has won the Peter Robinson Award for best crime novel, the top prize at the 2026 Crime Writers of Canada Awards, for The Black Wolf, the 20th of her thrillers to feature chief inspector Armand Gamache.

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Maritime writer C.S. Porter won the award for best crime novel set in Canada for Salt on Her Tongue, while Ray Critch nabbed the prize for best first crime novel for The Beltane Massacre. The Grand Master award went to Rick Mofina, author of dozens of thrillers.

The complete list of winners can be found at wfp.to/iML.

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Raven’s End Books (1859 Portage Ave.) is hitting the road this weekend, setting up shop at Selkirk Pride on Sunday from 3 to 7 p.m.

The bookstore will be set up at the handmade market at the Selkirk Waterfront with orders for pickup as well as a selection of queer horror titles for purchase.

For a list of events, vendors and more see Selkirk Pride’s Instagram page at instagram.com/prideselkirk.

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