Organized by the West Coast Book Prize Society, the BC and Yukon Book Prizes celebrate the achievements of writers, illustrators, and publishers from the two respective provinces. The prizes are presented annually at the BC and Yukon Book Prizes Gala and are administered and awarded by members of a non-profit society who represent all facets of the publishing and writing community.
Winners in the awards’ eight categories were be announced at a gala in Vancouver on September 19, 2026. Read below to discover the seven B.C. books that won their respective categories.
Christie Harris Illustrated Children’s Literature Prize
Celebrating Potlatches by Samantha Beynon, illustrated by Carla Joseph, Strong Nations Publishing Inc.
Inspired by Ts’msyen Chief William Beynon’s historic notebooks on Potlatches in the Gitxsan village of Gitsegukla, Celebrating Potlatches pairs intergenerational storytelling with beautiful illustrations to honour Indigenous traditions. From the award-winning author of Oolichan Moon and the accomplished illustrator of Be a Good Ancestor, this book recounts the 1885 Potlatch ban and the resilience of the communities who fought to keep their traditions alive.
Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize for Literary Fiction
Endling by Maria Reva, Knopf Canada
Ukraine, 2022. Yeva is a maverick scientist who scours the country’s forests, trying and failing to breed rare snails. To fund her work, she entertains Westerners who come to Ukraine on guided romance tours believing they’ll find docile wives. Nastia and Solomiya are also entangled in the booming marriage industry, posing as a hopeful bride and her translator. Together, the three women embark on the journey of a lifetime with a truckful of kidnapped bachelors and a last-of-his-kind snail—that is, until Russia invades.
A darkly comic novel, Endling draws on Reva’s own experiences as a Ukrainian expat tracking her family’s delicate dance of survival behind enemy lines. As fiction and reality collide on the page, she probes the hard truths of war: What stories must we tell ourselves to survive? Once shattered, can our sense of normalcy and security ever be restored?
Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize
Buzzkill Clamshell by Amber Dawn, Arsenal Pulp Press
As a novelist, memoirist, and poet, Amber Dawn regularly lays her heart bare in work that is fiery, raw, and intensely personal. In Buzzkill Clamshell, her third poetry collection, Amber Dawn circumvents the expectations of so-called confessional poetry, offering twisted mythmaking, extreme hyperbole, and lyrical gutter-mouthing that explore themes of sick and disabled queerness, aging, and desire.
With poems populated by severed heads, domme swan maidens, horny oracles, and other horrible purveyors of pleasure, Buzzkill Clamshell reads as if a leather dyke and a demonic goat had a baby – gleefully embracing the perverse while stomping its way through chronic pain and complex PTSD.
Already acclaimed for her candid and often kinky verse, Amber Dawn pushes further into trauma-informed eroticism with self-assured irreverence and uncomfortable abjectivity. Beneath her brilliant, carnivalesque imagery lies a prayer – not for the pain to end, but for finding fantastic new ways to cope with it.
Roderick Haig-Brown Regional Prize
Enemy Alien by Paul Wong and Tamio Wakayama, Figure 1 Publishing
The first publication devoted to Tamio Wakayama’s remarkable photographic career, Enemy Alien shares unpublished photos and a memoir by the artist about his life working alongside activist movements and in vibrant communities, from the civil rights–era American South to the Powell Street Festival in Vancouver.
Bill Duthie Booksellers’ Choice Award
The Teachings of Mutton: A Coast Salish Woolly Dog by Liz Hammond-Kaarremaa, Kerrie Charnley, Tsumi’tsiye Violet Elliott, Tuwuxwul’t-hw Tyrone Elliott, Andrea Fritz, Chepximiya Siyam Chief Dr. Janice George, Skwetsimeltxw Willard (Buddy) Joseph, Danielle Morsette, Michael Pavel, sałamitća Susan Pavel, Xweliqwiya Rena Point Bolton, Quwasen Debra Sparrow, Eliot White-Hill Kwulasultun, Jared Qwustenuxun Williams, Senaqwila Wyss, and Alison Ariss, Harbour Publishing
The pelt of a dog named “Mutton” languished in a drawer at the Smithsonian for 150 years until it was discovered, almost accidentally, by an amateur archivist. This book tells Mutton’s story and explores what it can teach us about Coast Salish Woolly Dogs and their cultural significance.
Until now, there has been very little written about the enigmatic Coast Salish Woolly Dog, or sqʷəmey̓ in the Hul’q’umi’num language. According to Indigenous Oral Histories of the Pacific Northwest, this small dog was bred for thousands of years for its woolly fibres, which were woven into traditional blankets, robes and regalia. Although the dogs were carefully protected by Coast Salish peoples, by the 1900s, the Woolly Dog had become so rare it is now considered extinct.
Co-authored with weavers, Knowledge Keepers, and Elders, The Teachings of Mutton interweaves perspectives from Musqueam, Squamish, Stó:lō, Suquamish, Cowichan, Katzie, Snuneymuxw, and Skokomish cultures with narratives of science, post-contact history, and the lasting and devastating impacts of colonization. Binding it all together is Mutton’s story—a tale of research, reawakening, and resurgence.
Hubert Evans Non-Fiction Prize
We Survived the Night: An Indigenous Reckoning by Julian Brave Noisecat, Knopf Canada
A stunning debut work of narrative nonfiction, We Survived the Night blends investigative journalism, colonial history, Salish Coyote stories and a deeply personal father-son journey in a powerful portrait of contemporary Indigenous life.
Born to a Sécwepemc artist from a small B.C. reserve and a Jewish-Irish mother from New York, Julian Brave NoiseCat grew up between worlds. Raised in Oakland’s urban Native community, he was drawn to his Indigenous heritage while struggling to understand his place within it and the complicated legacy of his father.
In his twenties, NoiseCat set out to uncover his father’s story and that of his Coyote People, the Interior Salish nations devastated by colonialism. What began as a personal search grew into five years of reporting across Canada and the United States, documenting the resilience, challenges and survival of Indigenous communities. We Survived the Night is a profound and inspiring portrait of Indigenous life, and a moving reckoning between a father and son seeking a future full of possibility.
Sheila A. Egoff Children’s Literature Prize
A Drop in the Ocean by Lea Taranto, Arsenal Pulp Press
An engaging YA novel about a girl in treatment for obsessive compulsive disorder that combats the dehumanizing stigma around mental illnessSixteen-year-old Mira Durand has just been checked into the secure unit of the Residency Adolescent Treatment Centre for obsessive compulsive and comorbid disorders. Four years of being passed around different psych wards like a hot potato have only worsened her OCD and anorexia. Her brutal, religious compulsions, which she believes keep her mom safe, make her less of a clean freak and more of a freak freak. No wonder her only friend is her journal.
At the Residency’s Ward 2, Mira discovers that her shrink is a fellow fantasy nerd and that her wardmates have enough of their own high-risk behaviours to tolerate hers. The complex friendships she forms with them (including a first love), the slow trust she builds with her treatment team, and the outside and family visits she earns give her things to look forward to beyond the drudgery of her compulsions. But it takes visiting Gung Gung, her dying maternal grandfather, for her to realize that to truly live, she must fight the cognitive distortions at the heart of her compulsions.
Learn more about the BC and Yukon Book Prizes on their website, and discover the contenders from B.C. who made it onto the shortlist.
