Red swirl graphic
The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic
The Sunburst Award 2025 Shortlist:
Barnet, Frankie — Mood Swings (McClelland & Stewart)
Hegele, Sydney — Bird Suit (Invisible Publishing)
Hopkinson, Nalo — Blackheart Man (Simon & Schuster)
Lubrin, Canisia — Code Noir (Alfred A. Knopf Canada)
Smith, Clayton B. — A Seal of Salvage (Breakwater Books)
📣✨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.
www.sunburstaward.org/node/144
21.07.2025 18:16 — 👍 29 🔁 19 💬 0 📌 4
A massive thank you to Natalee Caple, Geoff Ryman, and Lorina Stephens for selecting BIRD SUIT (@invisibooks 2024) as one of five books on the shortlist for the Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic. Grateful to be alongside Canisia, Nalo, Clayton, and Frankie ❤️
22.07.2025 20:16 — 👍 7 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Shortlist buddies! Congratulations, Nalo ❤️
22.07.2025 20:14 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Thank you so much, Paul!
22.07.2025 20:13 — 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
congrats to @nalohop.bsky.social @sydhegele.bsky.social and all the finalists!
21.07.2025 18:22 — 👍 13 🔁 4 💬 1 📌 0
Five books shortlisted for 2025 Sunburst Award - Quill and Quire
The winner of the $3,000 prize for literature of the fantastic will be named in the fall.
Five books have been shortlisted for the 2025 Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic! Huge congratulations to Nalo Hopkinson @nalohop.bsky.social, Frankie Barnet, Sydney Hegele @sydhegele.bsky.social, Canisia Lubrin, & Clayton B. Smith!
quillandquire.com/omni/five-bo...
#booksky ❤️📚
22.07.2025 11:24 — 👍 8 🔁 3 💬 0 📌 0
PLACE
Love is the place
where the wounded
started calling the wounds
on their knees strawberries.
Andrea Gibson forever ❤️
#poetry
14.07.2025 17:36 — 👍 66 🔁 10 💬 1 📌 0
NEW PAINTING!
"Real Location"
22" x 30", acrylic, graphite, and coloured pencils on paper.
11.07.2025 01:20 — 👍 6 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
My fiction left Alice Munro shaking. Her daughter’s reality did the same to me
I wasn't able to confront my abusers — until now.
www.thestar.com/opinion/my-f... Thank you Andrea Robin Skinner and siblings for your candour.Thank you @debdundas.bsky.social and the Star team for your guidance. And @sydhegele.bsky.social let’s talk
05.07.2025 20:25 — 👍 4 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 1
Such a powerful story, Sydney. Thank you for writing it. Words have such power.
05.07.2025 18:42 — 👍 2 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Most importantly, I'd like to thank The Gatehouse, where both Andrea and I received life-saving support as csa survivors. The Gatehouse offers peer-support groups for adult survivors of childhood sexual abuse, both in-person and remotely, as well as one-on-one therapy. It's truly a special place.
05.07.2025 17:11 — 👍 3 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
Andrea Skinner’s story helped me transform shame into solidarity
I have witnessed the power of storytelling to save lives
I'm grateful for Deborah Dundas, who worked with Andrea to share her original piece last year, and edited both Linda's piece and mine. I have wanted to work on something with Deborah for a long time. I admire everything she does.
It's also an honour to have my piece alongside Linda Svendsen's.
05.07.2025 17:11 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Andrea's piece saved my life last year while I was navigating memories of my own childhood sexual abuse. That's what the piece is about. It's also about how much Munro is in The Pump, and about not owing one another other the stories of our lives, but sometimes sharing those stories anyway.
05.07.2025 17:11 — 👍 1 🔁 0 💬 1 📌 0
Andrea Skinner’s story helped me transform shame into solidarity
I have witnessed the power of storytelling to save lives
For the Star, @lindasvendsen.bsky.social and I share pieces one year after Andrea Skinner's editorial that detailed her childhood sexual abuse at the hands of her stepfather, and revealed that her mother, Alice Munro, stayed with him. Ed. by @debdundas.bsky.social.
www.thestar.com/opinion/cont...
05.07.2025 17:11 — 👍 5 🔁 1 💬 1 📌 1
a still of mahmoud khalil as he exited ice detention. he’s wearing a long sleeve khaki button up and a white and black keffiyeh wrapped around his neck. he’s got a big smile on his face and his fist raise in the air, defiant and proud.
Mahmoud Khalil is free.
21.06.2025 00:17 — 👍 29252 🔁 4403 💬 268 📌 242
The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature 2025 Longlist Barnet, Frankie Mood Swings (McCleland& & Stewart) Coile, Mason - William (G.P. Putnam's Sons) Ghan, Ben Berman The Years Shall Run Like Rabbits (Buckrider Books) Hegele, Sydney- Bird Suit (Invisible Publishing) Hopkinson, Nalo Blackheart Man (Simon & Schuster) Lubrin, Canisia Code Noir (Alfred A. Knopf Canada) Oliveira, Anthony Dayspring (Strange Light) O'Neill, Heather The Capital of Dreams (HarperCollins) Sawyer, Robert The Downloaded (Shadowpaw Press) Smith, Clayton B. Seal of Salvage (Breakwater Books)'
✨The Sunburst Society is pleased to announce the longlist for the 2025 Award. We are delighted that the longlist highlights the diversity, quality, and scope of contemporary Canadian literature of the fantastic published in 2024. www.sunburstaward.org
17.06.2025 22:01 — 👍 52 🔁 19 💬 1 📌 5
The Sunburst Award for Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is back! Read the longlist for the 2025 award! Then read the books! Big congrats to @nalohop.bsky.social, @robertjsawyer.com, and the rest of the nominees!
💙📚 #booksky #sunburstaward #canlit
17.06.2025 22:13 — 👍 21 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 1
Seconded. Kristin has turned me on to some phenomenal books by authors I hadn’t yet read (Sydney Hegele, Thomas Olde Heuvelt, @afsulli.bsky.social, among others.) A trip into the city isn’t complete without stopping in for coffee, a convo, and copping some fun new reads. Little Ghosts is the best.📚💙
20.05.2025 19:16 — 👍 5 🔁 2 💬 1 📌 0
At TCAF, I had the opportunity at my event for a public thank you to Toronto Writers Against the War on Gaza, & the No Arms in the Arts campaign. These artists work hard, at no small expense to themselves, to defend the lives of Palestinians, and to insist that arts funding is not also blood money.
11.06.2025 16:47 — 👍 197 🔁 16 💬 2 📌 0
The National Post is significantly editing Canadian Press copy, without notifying the reader, to push a Zionist perspective and to portray Palestinians as terrorists. It's completely unethical and a breach of basic journalism standards. A new low for The National Post.
11.06.2025 17:36 — 👍 191 🔁 88 💬 10 📌 5
‼️👇 Please donate
11.06.2025 04:33 — 👍 4 🔁 5 💬 0 📌 0
We are floored in the best way: AMPLITUDES: An Anthology of Queer & Trans Futurity is a USA Today Bestselling book! We are THRILLED for @dianapho.bsky.social, @leemandelo.bsky.social, and all of our amazing contributors, and so happy to see queer &trans art supported now more than ever!
We are floored in the best way: AMPLITUDES: An Anthology of Queer & Trans Futurity is a USA Today Bestselling book!
We are THRILLED for @leemandelo.bsky.social, @dianapho.bsky.social, and all of our amazing contributors, and so happy to see queer & trans stories supported now more than ever! 💜
11.06.2025 16:09 — 👍 198 🔁 67 💬 13 📌 26
"oh, this time of great suffering will produce great art"
no it fucking won't, it'll mean artists spend all their creative energy on "how do I pay for food this week"
11.06.2025 17:26 — 👍 3564 🔁 1025 💬 50 📌 29
Image of a wine glass with red wine in it. Hosted by Emily Weedon, Drunk Fiction Tue May 27, 6pm. 4 book covers: White, Bird Suit, We Were the Bullfighters, Amaranthine Chevrolet
Tuesday May 27, 6pm at the Caledonian (856 College, Toronto): Drunk Fiction with @avivarubin-author.bsky.social @sydhegele.bsky.social Marianne Miller, Dennis Bolen. Hosted by @emilyweedon.bsky.social #CanLit
emilyweedon.com/drunk-fiction
20.05.2025 14:29 — 👍 3 🔁 1 💬 0 📌 0
Coup de Coeur:
Coup de Coeur: Recent Canadian spec-fic reads by Lulu Vidal
Fresh off the press!
Our first review column! Coup de Coeur: Recent Canadian spec-fic reads by Lulu Vidal, includes Ordinary Wonder Tales by Emily Urquhart, Northern Nights ed. Michael Kelly and Bird Suit by Sydney Hegele
www.heartlines-spec.com/coup-de-coeu...
22.04.2025 17:02 — 👍 14 🔁 6 💬 2 📌 1
Poster for a poetry reading & book launch by Jessica Hiemstra, Joseph Kidney, and Amanda Merpaw on Monday March 24 from 630 to 830 at Flying Books 784 College St.
If you're in Toronto, get yourself to Flying Books this evening - wish I could be there.
24.03.2025 21:16 — 👍 7 🔁 2 💬 0 📌 0
Periodical literary magazine located on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm people (Vancouver, BC)
https://prismmagazine.ca/
Argentinian-Canadian writer/Poetry translator/ Chapbook OF MOTHERS AND MADONNAS (Polyglot, 2023) Memoir-novella DAUGHTERS OF THE CURRENT (In Progress) Award Winning indie publisher www.laberintopress.com
Fan Writer
Editor at @nerdsofafeather.bsky.social
More pieces at Journey Planet, @skiffyandfanty.com @reactorsff.bsky.social
@file770.bsky.social and elsewhere! Podcaster. #photography I'm just this guy, you know? He/him.
She/her. Bi. Textile queen. AFOL. PNW. Low vision/blind. Immune-suppressed. Chronically ill. Extremely sweary. Alt text for everyone! #alttext for my tutorials to learn how.
New here, long online.
Human, author. Field Work: On Baseball and Making a Living (@pressassembly.bsky.social). The Diapause (novel), McCurdle's Arm (novella) (@invisibooks.bsky.social). #SABR (Hanlan's Pt). He/him.
📍Peterborough, Ontario
linktr.ee/andrewgforbes
The Sunburst Award for Excellence in Canadian Literature of the Fantastic is an annual juried award that recognizes exceptional works of Canadian speculative literature. www.sunburstaward.org
Former space comms, ex-journo, writer. I 💜 bad movies, good books, post-punk, space, sci-fi, #LFC and NBA/Nuggets.
Filasṭīn Ḥurra, now and forever. 🇵🇸
Dysgwr Cymraeg. Dw i’n cyfri’r dyddiau nes dychwelyd i Gymru. 🏴
Writing in 3:AM, Feminist Review, @riseupreview.bsky.social, Diode, @partiallyshymag.bsky.social, Ink Sweat & Tears, Lucent Dreaming… First book: Bacchus Against the Wall (Chicago: Anxiety Press, 2023)
Heartlines Spec is a speculative magazine bringing you SFF stories and poetry focused on long-term friendships and relationships. $0.08CAD/word 🇨🇦🌎 (posts by @rebecca-b)
Writer, reader, gardener. Having a good time. "Wise Up," the book I co-wrote, is available here: https://bookshop.org/p/books/wise-up-irreverent-enlightenment-from-a-mother-who-s-been-through-it-karen-duffy/18380216?ean=9781541620476
Scientist, artist, educator, chef, fisherman, outdoor enthusiast, bookworm, linguist, peacemaker, volunteer, etc. in no particular order.
Please don't ask because I will not date you, I will not send you money, and I will not be your disciple. Thanks.
writer, performer, theatre-maker,
NS <-> TO
Novelist & Poet. Author of (fiction) Semi-Detached, Matadora, Smoke, Ten Good Seconds of Silence (Poetry) This Report Is Strictly Confidential. Website: elizabethruth.com Insta: elizabethruthauthor Creative writing Instructor, U of Toronto. Lives in Canada
Coach House Books is an independent Canadian publisher of poetry, fiction, drama & nonfiction. Good on paper since 1965. https://linktr.ee/chbooks
This Magazine Publisher. Words in Longreads, The Walrus, Catapult, Hazlitt and more. Author of Girls, Interrupted: How Pop Culture Is Failing Women and a 33 1/3 on Beauty and the Beat by The Go-Go's.
Métis writer/artist in amiskwaciy-wâskahikan (Edmonton). Winner of the 1st Prairie Grindstone Prize. My book The Beauty of Vultures (poetry) w photography by Danny Miles out now. Board member NeWest Press. #prairiegothic #writerwholovesbirds
Writer. Mom. Xeric gardener. OPENING (Glass Poetry, 2025). REMAINDER (Bull City Press, 2025). FRUITFUL (Driftwood Press, 2024). Poems in Best of the Net, West Branch, phoebe, Cincinnati Review, etc. See more poetry at https://linktr.ee/stefaniekirbypoetry
Woman-owned boutique literary agency, representing award-winning writers of fiction, nonfiction, and children’s books.
NDN author, Mississaugas of the Credit. He/him. 🏳️🌈 Polyamorous. Previously in The Capilano Review, GUEST, and Best Canadian Poetry. Bad at mandolin.
