The Sunburst Award Society is pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2025 Award. We are delighted that the five-book shortlist highlights the scope and stellar quality of contemporary Canadian literature of the fantastic published in 2024.
The shortlisted books:
Barnet, Frankie — Mood Swings (McClelland & Stewart)
The jurors chose Frankie Barnet’s debut speculative fiction novel Mood Swings because of its wit, its social/political satire, and the absurd nature of the premise (a caution regarding rampant civilization which ignores the natural world). Barnet’s work very much mirrors the sensibilities and attitudes of the Millennial generation, offering a fresh perspective regarding writing style and au courant subject matter, functioning as an open window to a world that older generations will find fascinating.
Hegele, Sydney — Bird Suit (Invisible Publishing)
Apart from much else, Sydney Hegele’s Bird Suit is a fresh take on small-town Canadian life, following a family with a deep connection to their lake's strangest inhabitants: sweetwater birds that mimic and interbreed with humans. Every year, young mothers in the town of Port Peter give their newborn girls to the birds—but young Georgia was rejected by them. As a young woman, she becomes ensnared in an affair with a man who is murderously abusive of his son. Packing an abrupt but satisfying ending, Bird Suit might have been grim, but Hegele's writing is full of humour and the characters are delightful (if sometimes scary).
Hopkinson, Nalo — Blackheart Man (Simon & Schuster)
Blackheart Man follows Veycosi, a young man confronting his own darknesses while unraveling mysteries tied to his identity. Hopkinson performs an astonishing feat of worlding here. Woven through with linguistic and cultural influences, the social and political complexity of this work of art feels sublime. Veycosi himself is an ambitious creation in a story that is titanic in scope.
Lubrin, Canisia — Code Noir (Alfred A. Knopf Canada) Code Noir is a stunning debut fiction collection, reimagining as interconnected stories the 59 articles of the 1685 French colonial "Code Noir" that regulated slavery. This extraordinary work traverses genre, formal experimentation, and literary registers. By literalizing the enmeshment of realism, dystopia, historical fiction, and futuristic fantasy, Lubrin explores Black resistance as a practically interdimensional reality. Torkwase Dyson’s black-and-white drawings accompany and amplify the text's poetic power.
Smith, Clayton B. — A Seal of Salvage (Breakwater Books)
Another debut novel, Clayton B. Smith’s A Seal of Salvage is a coming-of-age story, a romantic tragedy married to prejudices born of ignorance, indigence, and homophobia, all wrapped within the mythology of selkies. Smith seamlessly illustrates how a community shuns and isolates a youth by fabricating his parentage to mythology. The writing is sharp and yet lyrical, the characterization vivid, and its periodic use of an unreliable narrator is brilliant.
The jurors for the 2025 Award are distinguished authors Natalee Caple, Geoff Ryman, and Lorina Stephens. 78 books were submitted for consideration for the 2025 Award.
The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is active again after a four-year hiatus. Since its inception in 2001, the award has recognized over 225 works of Canadian speculative literature and honoured deserving books through its prestigious awards program."
The winner of the $3,000 award will be announced in the fall. Visit sunburstaward.org for more information.
