The Journey Prize Stories 29: The Best of Canadia's New Writers

Like The O. Henry Prize Stories, The Pushcart Prize, and the Best American Short Stories series, The Journey Prize Stories is one of the most celebrated annual literary anthologies in North America. For almost 30 years, the anthology has consistently introduced readers to the next generation of great Canadian authors, a tradition that proudly continues with this latest edition. With settings ranging from wartime China to an island off the coast of British Columbia, the ten stories in this collection represent the year's best short fiction by some of our most exciting emerging voices.

A young boy who believes he is being stalked by an unstoppable, malevolent entity discovers that he may not be the only one. In a sweeping story set against the fall of Shanghai during the Second Sino-Japanese War, a pregnant woman waits anxiously for her doctor husband to leave the city before it's too late. A river that runs through a First Nations community is the source of sustenance, escape, and tragedy for a girl and her family. The haunting footage of the politically motivated self-immolation has unexpected reverberations for a Tibetan-Canadian woman dealing with multiple conflicts in her own life. A man who works a back-breaking job at an industrial mat cleaning service is pushed to his limit. When her mother has to return to Kinshasa to bury a family member, a girl gradually learns of the intricacy and depth of grief, in an evocative piece that illuminates the cultural gaps common within immigrant families, and the power of food and stories to bridge them.

The stories included in the anthology are contenders for the $10,000 Journey Prize, which is made possible by Pulitzer Prize-winning author James A. Michener's donation of Canadian royalties from his novel Journey, which McClelland & Stewart published in 1988. The 2017 winner will be announced by the Writers' Trust of Canada in November 2017.

KEVIN HARDCASTLE is a fiction writer from Simcoe County, Ontario. He is the author of the novel In the Cage and the short story collection Debris, which won the Trillium Book Award, was runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and was a finalist for the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize. His short fiction has been widely published in Canada and the United States, in journals such as The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Puritan, EVENT, and Shenandoah. His work has been anthologized in The Journey Prize Stories 24 & 26, Best Canadian Stories 15, and Internazionale. He lives and works in Toronto.



GRACE O'CONNELL is the author of the novels Be Ready for the Lightning and Magnified World, the latter of which was a national bestseller and a Globe and Mail 100 selected book. She was the 2014 winner of the Canadian Authors Association Emerging Writer Award, and her work has appeared in publi­cations such as the Globe and Mail, the National Post, ELLE Canada, This Magazine, The Journey Prize Stories 24, and Taddle Creek, where she previously served as Associate Editor. She holds an MFA in creative writing and teaches at the University of Toronto while working as a freelance writer and editor.





AYELET TSABARI was born in Israel to a large family of Yemeni descent. Her first book, The Best Place on Earth, won the Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and the Edward Lewis Wallant Award, and was long listed for the Frank O'Connor International Short Story Award. The book was a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice, a Kirkus Review Best Book of 2016, and has been published internationally to great acclaim. Excerpts from her forthcoming book have won a National Magazine Award and a Western Magazine Award. She lives in Toronto. The author lives in Toronto, ON.

About Kevin Hardcastle