Best Canadian

Now in its 48th year, Best Canadian Stories has long championed the short story form and highlighted the work of many writers who have gone on to shape the Canadian literary canon. Caroline Adderson, Margaret Atwood, Clark Blaise, Tamas Dobozy, Mavis Gallant, Douglas Glover, Norman Levine, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, Diane Schoemperlen, Kathleen Winter, and many others have appeared in its pages over the decades, making Best Canadian Stories the go-to source for what's new in Canadian Fiction writing for close to five decades. Selected by guest editor Russell Smith, the 2018 edition draws together both newer and established writers to shape an engaging and luminous mosaic of writing in this country today-a continuation of not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters.

Newly acquired by Biblioasis from Oberon Press, and edited by John Metcalf, this expanded edition of the Best Canadian Stories will build on the 46-year history of the anthology and will feature 15 of the best short stories from across Canada that 2016 had to offer.

The eleventh installment of Canada's annual volume of essays showcases diverse nonfiction writing from across the country. Culled from leading Canadian magazines and journals, Best Canadian Essays 2019 contains award-winning and award-nominated nonfiction articles that are topical and engaging and have their finger on the pulse of our contemporary psyches.

Selected by editor Mary Dalton, the 2026 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in the past year. Featuring introductions by Mary Dalton and series editor Anita Lahey, Best Canadian Poetry 2026 offers a collection of brief but impactful glimpses into our current literary landscape, that expands our worldview and continues in the series tradition of asking: What constitutes a great poem? Featuring: John Wall Barger • Ronna Bloom • Nicholas Bradley • Petra Chambers • Carolina Corcoran • Kayla Czaga • Danielle Devereaux • Irina Dumitrescu • Puneet Dutt • Darrell Epp • Susan Glickman • Ariel Gordon • Jennifer Gossoo • Sue Goyette • Richard Greene • Glenn Hayes • Henry Heavyshield • Dave Hickey • Nancy Huggett • Kevin Irie • Emily Kedar • Conor Kerr • Evelyn Lau • Sylvia Legris • Steve McOrmond • Estlin McPhee • M.W. Miller • Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi • George Moore • Paul Moorehead • A.F. Moritz • Megan Morrison • Erín Moure • Cassandra Myers • Shane Neilson • Nofel • David O'Meara • John O'Neill • Michael Ondaatje • Craig Francis Power • John Reibetanz • Ozayr Saloojee • Vivek Sharma • Sue Sinclair • Karen Solie • Misha Solomon • Susan White • Erin Wilson • Jaeyun Yoo • Patricia Young

Selected by editor Mark Anthony Jarman, the 2023 edition of Best Canadian Stories showcases the best Canadian fiction writing published in 2021. A collection that takes us into a firey near-future and a notorious feminist's personal past, from a near-drowning to a fake breakdown, through mothers who fail us to crummy jobs, to thieves, to grief, to revenge with a bottle of tabasco sauce. With work by established practitioners alongside that of lesser-known writers, this year's Best Canadian Stories shows how the short form can evoke the experience of a person on the brink. Including 2023 Metcalf-Rooke Award winner Caroline Adderson, and featuring, in tribute, two stories by the late Steven Heighton, this year's collection draws together beloved Canadian practitioners of the form and thrilling new voices to continue not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters. Featuring works by: Caroline Adderson • David Bezmozgis • Jowita Bydlowska • Kate Cayley • Tamas Dobozy • Omar El Akkad • Christine Estima • Naomi Fontaine • Sara Freeman • Steven Heighton • Philip Huynh • David Huebert • Alexandra Mae Jones • Carmelinda Scian

Now in its 49th year, Best Canadian Stories has long championed the short story form and highlighted the work of many writers who have gone on to shape the Canadian literary canon. Margaret Atwood, Clark Blaise, Tamas Dobozy, Mavis Gallant, Douglas Glover, Norman Levine, Rohinton Mistry, Alice Munro, Leon Rooke, Diane Schoemperlen, Kathleen Winter, and many others have appeared in its pages over the decades, making Best Canadian Stories the go-to source for what's new in Canadian fiction writing for close to five decades. Selected by guest editor Caroline Adderson, the 2019 edition draws together both newer and established writers to shape an engaging and luminous mosaic of writing in this country today-a continuation of not only a series, but a legacy in Canadian letters.

Selected by editor John Barton, the 2023 edition of “Best Canadian Poetry” showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in 2021. "My goal," writes guest editor John Barton of his long career as a literary magazine editor, "was always to be jostled awake, and I soon realized that I was being jostled awake for two-myself and the reader... I came to understand that my job description included an obligation to expose readers to wide varieties of poetry, to challenge their assumptions while expanding their taste." In selecting this year's edition of Best Canadian Poetry, Barton brings the same catholic spirit to his survey of Canadian poems published by magazines and journals in 2021. From new work by Canadian favourites to exciting new talents, this year's anthology offers fifty poems to challenge and enlarge your sense of the power and possibility of Canadian poetry. Featuring: Leslie Joy Ahenda • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Bertrand Bickersteth • Tawahum Bige • Stephanie Bolster • Susan Braley • Moni Brar • Jake Byrne • Helen Cho • Conyer Clayton • Lucas Crawford • Sophie Crocker • Michael Dunwoody • Evelyna Ekoko-Kay • Tyler Engström • Triny Finlay • Elee Kraljii Gardiner • Lise Gaston • Susan Gillis • Beth Goobie • Patrick Grace • Laurie D. Graham • River Halen • Eva H.D. • Louise Bernice Halfe-Skydancer • Sarah Hilton • Karl Jirgens • Mobólúwajídìde D. Joseph • Penn Kemp • Jeremy Loveday • Randy Lundy • Helen Han Wei Luo • Colin Morton • Jordan Mounteer • Samantha Nock • Kathryn Nogue • Michelle Porter • Rebekah Rempel • Armand Garnet Ruffo • Richard Sanger • Nedda Sarshar • K.R. Segriff • Christina Shah • Sandy Shreve • Adrian Southin • J.J. Steinfeld • Sarah Yi-Mei Tsiang • Eric Wang • Tom Wayman • Jan Zwicky

"A best poem fulfills the promise set out in its first syllable, word, syntax, line break, and soundscape to its reader/listener." "What is a best poem?" asks Best Canadian Poetry 2020 guest editor Marilyn Dumont, the critically acclaimed and award-winning author of four poetry collections. "A best poem fulfills the promise set out in its first syllable, word, syntax, line break, and soundscape to its reader/listener. The work required to complete a poem takes risk, skill, and practice, and the poems selected for this anthology all exhibit such attributes." In precise language that exposes the attitudes inherent in English, innovative forms that illuminate their content, and mastery of music akin to a composer's score, the fifty poems collected here fulfill their promises and, in doing so, demonstrate the country's rich diversity and talent for invention-and the promises it might fulfill as well. Featuring introductions by series editor Anita Lahey and advisory editor Amanda Jernigan, and poems by: Kazim Ali • Amber Dawn • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Brandi Bird • Selina Boan • Margret Bollerup • Rita Bouvier • Tim Bowling • Frances Boyle • Di Brandt • Rob Budde • Mugabi Byenkya • Dell Catherall • Margaret Christakos Ivan Coyote • Barry Dempster • Kyle Flemmer • Susan Haldane • Louise Bernice Halfe—Sky Dancer • Jane Eaton Hamilton • Maureen Scott Harris • Dallas Hunt • Ashley Hynd • Babo Kamel • Conor Kerr • Don Kerr • Fiona Tinwei Lam • Natalie Lim • Tanis MacDonald • Nyla Matuk • Sadie McCarney • Tara McGowan-Ross • Erín Moure • Roger Nash • Samantha Nock • Erin Noteboom • Abby Paige • Geoff Pevlin • Alycia Pirmohamed • Jana Prikryl • Jason Purcell • Armand Garnet Ruffo • Rebecca Salazar • Robyn Sarah • Erin Soros • Kevin Spenst • John Elizabeth Stintzi • Andrea Thompson • Sanna Wani • Adele Wiseman

Guest editor Rob Taylor, author of the widely acclaimed collection The News, brings a passionate ear for rhythm, an eye for narrative compression, an appetite for vital subject matter, and an affinity for warmth and wit to his selections for Best Canadian Poetry 2019. The fifty ruggedly independent poems gathered here tackle themes of emergence, defiance, ferocious anger, gratitude, and survival. They are alive with acoustic energy, precise in their language, and moving in their use of the personal to explore fraught political realities. They emit a cloud of invisible energy, a charge. Featuring work by: •Colleen Baran • Gary Barwin • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Ali Blythe • Marilyn Bowering • Julie Bruck • Sara Cassidy • Sue Chenette • Chelsea Coupal • Kayla Czaga • Sadiqa de Meijer • Adebe DeRango-Adem • Chris Evans • Beth Follett • Stevie Howell • Danielle Hubbard • Dallas Hunt • Catherine Hunter • Sonnet L'Abbé • Ben Ladouceur • Tess Liem • D.A. Lockhart • Jessie Loyer • Annick MacAskill • Domenica Martinello • Laura Matwichuk • Katie McGarry • Jimmy McInnes • A.F. Moritz • Alexandra Oliver • Alycia Pirmohamed • Marion Quednau • Claudia Coutu Radmore • Shazia Hafiz Ramji • Shaun Robinson • Yusuf Saadi • Rebecca Salazar • Ellie Sawatzky • David Seymour • Kevin Spenst • Mallory Tater • Souvankham Thammavongsa • Russell Thornton • Daniel Scott Tysdal • William Vallières • Katherena Vermette • Douglas Walbourne-Gough • Cara Waterfall • Gillian Wigmore • Ian Williams.

"This is a book," writes guest editor Souvankham Thammavongsa, "about what I saw and read and loved, and want you to see and read and love." Selected from work published by Canadian poets in magazines and journals in 2020, Best Canadian Poetry 2021 gathers the poems Thammavongsa loved most over a year's worth of reading, and draws together voices that "got in and out quickly, that said unusual things, that were clear, spare, and plain, that made [her] laugh out loud... the voices that barely ever survive to make it onto the page." From new work by Canadian icons to thrilling emerging talents, this year's anthology offers fifty poems for you to fall in love with as well.

The thirteenth installment of Canada's annual volume of essays showcases diverse nonfiction writing from across the country. "The exceptional essay," writes editor Bruce Whiteman, "derives from a passionate feeling, love and anger being perhaps its upper and lower limits, coexisting with a desire for truth, and it aims for the radiance of what is." In the 2021 edition of Best Canadian Essays, Whiteman's selections seek truth in all the places it may be found, from walks in brambled woods and ancient cities to memories of childhoods that shape a life, to analyses of artifacts both legislative and cultural that advance equality long overdue, to reports from the field that articulate the poetry of the present, the invisibility of the poor, the social contours and consuming mental contagions of the ongoing pandemic. Drawn from leading magazines and journals published in 2020, the fifteen essays gathered here brilliantly illuminate what is.

"The right story, at the right time, if you happen to be open to it ... can perhaps move you so far outside of yourself that you will not consider going back." "Like meeting a stranger, much of the pleasure of a story is its unknown power," writes Best Canadian Stories 2020 guest editor Paige Cooper. "The right story, at the right time, if you happen to be open to it ... can perhaps move you so far outside of yourself that you will not consider going back." From Festival du Voyageur to the shores of Lake Erie, Tbilisi to Toronto, the Amisk River to a hotel-turned-hospital in the midst of a mysterious pandemic, this wide-ranging anthology brings together the real and the speculative, small towns and big cities, grief and humour, introducing readers to stories that startle us into new understanding-of ourselves and each other, the worlds we inhabit and the ones they help us to imagine. Featuring work by: Maxime Raymond Bock • Lynn Coady • Kristyn Dunnion • Omar El Akkad • Camilla Grudova • Conor Kerr • Alex Leslie • Thea Lim • Madeleine Maillet • Cassidy McFadzean • Michael Melgaard • Jeff Noh • Casey Plett • Eden Robinson • Naben Ruthnum • Pablo Strauss • Souvankham Thammavongsa

The twelfth installment of Best Canadian Essays speaks with striking prescience to our contemporary moment. "This book-like most that have found their way into the world this fall-began life in the Before Times," writes editor Sarmishta Subramanian. Written and first published by leading magazines and journals in 2019, the essays selected here speak with striking prescience to our contemporary moment. From health concerns both global and individual; to decisions about how much of ourselves we should share, online and in person; to surveillance capitalism and cancel culture, public and private concerns intertwine throughout Best Canadian Essays 2020. Just as our current challenges in public health, policing, and justice require researchers, lawmakers, and citizen groups, writes Subramanian, they also require writers. Here she presents sixteen, "essaying in the French sense of the word to think it through." Featuring work by: James Brooke-Smith • Larissa Diakiw • Jenny Ferguson • Wayne Grady • Alexandra Kimball • Amorina Kingdon • Andy Lamey • Michael LaPointe • Benjamin Leszcz • Alanna Mitchell • Alexandra Molotkow • Jeremy Narby • Andrew Nikiforuk • Michelle Orange • Christina Sharpe • Carl Wilson.

"Combines both emerging and established voices for a fascinating glimpse at the most exciting short fiction coming out of this country."-Open Book Selected and introduced by Zsuzsi Gartner, Best Canadian Stories 2026 provides a distinctive sample of the best Canadian short fiction published over the previous year. Geminis are recruited to fight a war in space; an awkward Christmas dinner escalates around the roadkill main course; an interactive fiction game set in early Quebec becomes devastating and unnervingly strange for the player. These fifteen stories draw together an expressive range of characters and narratives, and appeal to both longstanding readers and those looking for an entry point into Canadian literature. Featuring: Shashi Bhat • Julie Bouchard, translated by Arielle Aaronson • Randy Boyagoda • Grant Buday • Petra Chambers • Sophie Crocker • Bill Gaston • Evan J • Aaron Kreuter • Alex Leslie • Erin MacNair • D.F. McCourt • Rishi Midha • Kaitlin Ruether • Margaret Sweatman

Submitted and published by Canadian writers in 2020, Schoemperlen's selections for Best Canadian Stories 2021 feature work by established practitioners of the form alongside exciting newcomers, and stories published by leading magazines and journals as well as those appearing in print for the first time-all of which, as Schoemperlen writes, "bring us news of the world and the shape of things to come."

Selected by editor Emily Urquhart, the 2025 edition of Best Canadian Essays showcases the best Canadian nonfiction writing published in 2023. Featuring: Katherine Ashenburg • James Cairns • Mitchell Consky • Michelle Cyca • Sadiqa de Meijer • Ariel Gordon • Lana Hall • Helen Humphreys • Rebecca Kempe • Jiin Kim • Christine Lai • Jessica Moore • Tom Rachman • Leanne Betasamosake Simpson • Vance Wright

Selected by editor Aislinn Hunter, the 2025 edition of Best Canadian Poetry showcases the best Canadian poetry writing published in 2023. Featuring: Hollie Adams • George Amabile • Erin Bedford • Billy-Ray Belcourt • Bertrand Bickersteth • Elisabeth Blair • Ronna Bloom • Alison Braid-Fernandez • Robert Bringhurst • Emily Cann • Anne Carson • Molly Cross-Blanchard • Lorna Crozier • Kayla Czaga • Evelyna Ekoko-Kay • Kate Genevieve • Susan Gillis • Sue Goyette • Catherine Graham • Henry Heavyshield • Gerald Hill • Alexander Hollenberg • Kim June Johnson • Eve Joseph • Evelyn Lau • Y. S. Lee • D. A. Lockhart • Fareh Malik • David Martin • Domenica Martinello • Cassidy McFadzean • Carmelita McGrath • Erín Moure • Tolu Oloruntoba • Catherine Owen • Molly Peacock • Miranda Pearson • Pauline Peters • Amanda Proctor • Shannon Quinn • Armand Garnet Ruffo • Anne Simpson • Carolyn Smart • Karen Solie • Catherine St. Denis • Owen Torrey • Michael Trussler • Sara Truuvert • Rob Winger • Jaeyun Yoo

Selected by editor Mireille Silcoff, the 2023 edition of Best Canadian Essays showcases the best Canadian nonfiction writing published in 2021. "Our current, tumultuous age" writes editor Mireille Silcoff, "is an important time for essayists, because in moments of great change, it's good to have chroniclers with the presence of mind to step back and assess." Silcoff's selections for Best Canadian Essays 2023 do just that. In examinations of identity-personal, familial, racial, and cultural-and investigations of the far-reaching shockwaves of war; in mediations on illness and health, belonging and alienation, parents and children; in unexpected arguments about novel-writing, Donald Trump, and the Filet-O-Fish sandwich, the essays gathered here chart all kinds of boundaries, comprising, as Silcoff terms it, "a small bid for understanding that a border, a line drawn, need not be only the beginning or the end of something. That a frontier can be a place-indeed is the best place-for a conversation between sides to begin." Featuring works by: Jamaluddin Aram • Sharon Butala • Kunal Chaudhary • Christopher Cheung • Emma Gilchrist • Michelle Good • Paul Howe • Jane Hu • Heather Jessup • Chafic LaRochelle • Stephen Marche • Kathy Page • Tom Rachman • M.E. Rogan • Allan Stratton • Sarmishta Subramanian

Selected by editor Steven W. Beattie, the 2025 edition of Best Canadian Stories showcases the best Canadian fiction writing published in 2023. Featuring: Chris Bailey • Christine Birbalsingh • Cody Caetano • Kate Cayley • Lynn Coady • Caitlin Galway • Marcel Goh • Beth Goobie • Mark Anthony Jarman • Saad Omar Khan • Chelsea Peters • Kawai Shen • Liz Stewart • Glenna Turnbull • Catriona Wright • Clea Young