Canisia Lubrin won the 2025 Carol Shields Prize, given annually to a work of fiction written by a woman or nonbinary author in the U.S. or Canada, for Code Noir.
Lubrin’s book, which features art by Torkwase Dyson, was published by Soft Skull Press in February. The collection contains 59 short stories and is modeled after the 1685 Code Noir decree by King Louis XIV, which served as the legal code for slavery in France’s colonies. It is Lubrin’s first work of fiction.
Diana Abu-Jaber, Norma Dunning, Kim Fu, Tessa McWatt, and Jeanne Thornton, the jurors for the prize, said in a citation, “Code Noir contains multitudes. Its characters inhabit multi-layered landscapes of the past, present and future, confronting suffering, communion and metamorphosis. Canisia Lubrin’s prose is polyphonic; the stories invite you to immerse yourself in both the real and the speculative, in the intimate and in sweeping moments of history.…Lubrin retunes the legacies of slavery, colonialism and violence. This is a virtuoso collection that breaks new ground in short fiction.”
The Carol Shields Prize, named after the late American Canadian author of The Stone Diaries and Unless, comes with a cash prize of $150,000. It was first awarded in 2023 to Fatimah Asghar for When We Were Sisters. The 2024 winner was V.V. Ganeshananthan for Brotherless Night.
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
