What to know
- The City of Toronto and Toronto Public Library have announced the 13 books longlisted for the 2026 Toronto Book Awards.
- Established in 1974, the annual award recognizes fiction and non-fiction books inspired by Toronto, its residents and its history.
- Five finalists will be announced in September, with the winner receiving $20,000 and the remaining shortlisted authors receiving $2,000 each.
- The winner will be revealed during an awards ceremony at the Toronto Reference Library on Tuesday, Nov. 10.
Toronto’s literary scene is celebrating the stories and communities that make the city what it is.
The City of Toronto and Toronto Public Library have revealed the 13 books longlisted for the 2026 Toronto Book Awards, with works spanning crime fiction, poetry, romance, memoir, historical research and explorations of some of the city’s most pressing issues.
Established by Toronto City Council in 1974, the annual awards recognize works of literary merit inspired by Toronto and its residents.
The award is open to fiction and nonfiction books that deepen readers’ understanding of the city’s people, places, histories and diverse communities.
Over its more than 50-year history, the award has honoured some of Canada’s most recognizable writers, including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Dionne Brand, Sarah Polley and Desmond Cole.
Atwood, who appears on this year’s longlist, previously won the award in 1989 for Cat’s Eye.
Last year’s winner was Maggie Helwig’s Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community, which documented the experiences of an unhoused community outside St. Stephen-in-the-Fields Anglican Church in Kensington Market.
The names of winning authors and books dating back to 1974 are also engraved into paving stones at the Toronto Book Garden outside Queen’s Quay Terminal, which opened in 2017. A complete list of past winners is available through the city.
Here are the 13 books competing for the winning spot in this year’s Toronto Book Awards.
Black Public Joy: No Permit or Permission Required by Jay Pitter
Public space expert Pitter examines how anti-Black racism has historically controlled and restricted the ways Black people move through shared spaces. The book also celebrates Black public joy as a powerful practice, tracking how communities have claimed space through gatherings, music, dancing, protest and everyday freedom.
Read more about Black Public Joy on TPL’s website.
Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts by Margaret Atwood
Atwood revisits her unconventional childhood in Canada’s northern forests, her early years as a writer and the experiences that helped inspire her previous books. The memoir also reflects on her literary career, early marriage, Toronto’s writing scene and her life with the late novelist Graeme Gibson.
Read more about Atwood’s memoir on TPL’s website.
Cherry Beach by Don Gillmor
Two teenage girls are found murdered inside a rundown Toronto highrise, placing detectives Jamieson Abel and Davis at the centre of a high-profile investigation. Set during an unbearably hot summer, the literary crime novel explores the city’s history of questionable real-estate deals, racial inequality, police corruption and widening class division.
Read more about Cherry Beach on TPL’s website.
Fatal Confession: A Girl’s Murder, a Man’s Execution, and the Fitton Case by Carolyn Strange
This non-fiction book revisits the 1956 murder of 13-year-old Linda Lampkin, whose body was discovered on Toronto’s industrial waterfront, and the subsequent arrest and execution of Robert Fitton. Strange examines the legal, political and cultural questions raised by the case, including capital punishment, police confessions and the era’s troubling interpretations of sexual consent.
Read more on Strange’s non-fiction crime book on TPL’s website.
Good Guys by Sharon Bala
Claire Talbot is a burnt-out publicist working for a Toronto-based international aid charity that is approaching bankruptcy. After she arranges for a celebrity to visit one of the overseas orphanages, a journalist uncovers a serious crime, forcing Claire and her colleagues to confront the harm caused by the organization created to do good.
Read more about Good Guys on TPL’s website.
Housing for All: How Toronto Built the St. Lawrence Neighbourhood by Frank Lewinberg and Vincenzo Pietropaolo
Through historical research, photography and interviews, the book explores how an industrial area was transformed into Toronto’s mixed-income St. Lawrence neighbourhood during the 1970s. It examines the collaboration between governments, residents, non-profits and the private sector that created a community now regarded as a model for successful affordable housing and neighbourhood planning.
Read more about Housing for All on TPL’s website.
juniper by Kerri Huffman
Huffman’s debut poetry collection traces the final months of a difficult and transformational relationship through reflections set in kitchens, nightclubs, gardens, art galleries and parks. The poems explore friendship, addiction, desire and the difficult ways memories continue to linger after a relationship ends.
Read about the poetry collection on TPL’s website.
The Paper Birds by Jeanette Lynes
Set in Toronto during the summer of 1943, the novel follows Gemma Sullivan as she secretly joins a wartime codebreaking unit in Mimico. Her demanding work, relationship with her aunt, and risky connection with a prisoner of war highlight the unrecognized contributions and sacrifices of Canadian women during the Second World War.
Read more about The Paper Birds on TPL’s website.
Precarious: The Lives of Migrant Workers by Marcello Di Cintio
Di Cintio investigates Canada’s migrant-labour system through its history and the experiences of temporary workers across several industries. Through conversations with workers, employers, and advocates, the book examines exploitation, unsafe conditions, and the questions of fairness about workers’ vulnerability and the system.
Read about Di Cintio’s investigations on TPL’s website.
Property by Kate Cayley
Over the course of one spring day in a gentrifying Toronto neighbourhood, several residents go about their everyday routines as tensions surrounding family, housing, class, and parenting quietly build. By evening, someone is dead, leaving the community changed and exposing connections holding its residents together.
Read more about Property on TPL’s website.
Tyson’s Song by Peter N. Bailey
Best friends Bryan and Tyson spend one final night together in Toronto before Bryan moves to Vancouver, but a missed late-night bus forces long-buried tensions to the surface. As a police cruiser circles nearby, the play explores Black masculinity, brotherhood, incarceration, and conversations about men’s mental health.
Read more about Tyson’s Song on TPL’s website.
Where Histories Meet: Indigenous and Settler Encounters in the Toronto Area by Victoria Freeman
Created in consultation with five local First Nations, the book examines relations between Indigenous peoples and settlers in the Toronto region from the colonial treaties of the 1780s to the Indian Act of 1876. It brings archival records together with oral history and the knowledge of Indigenous Elders to explore treaties, settlement, resistance and colonialism.
Read more about Where Histories Meet on TPL’s website.
You Started It by Jackie Khalilieh
Seventeen-year-old Jamie Taher-Foster has planned the perfect final year of high school in Toronto, until her longtime boyfriend suddenly ends their relationship. Determined to win him back, she begins fake dating TikTok dancer Axel Dahini, but their arrangement gradually challenges her carefully organized expectations about relationships, identity, and growing up.
Read more about You Started It on TPL’s website.
What happens next?
A five-book shortlist will be announced in September, followed by the winner at an awards ceremony at the Toronto Reference Library on Tuesday, Nov. 10.
The City doubled the prize money last year: this year’s winning author will receive $20,000, while each of the four remaining shortlisted authors will receive $2,000.
The 2026 jury includes author and poet Jake Byrne, novelist and non-fiction writer Kristen den Hartog, literary agent Julia Kim, educator and anti-racism advocate Matthew R. Morris, and poet, translator and curator Bänoo Zan.
