Kirkus Prize lauds trio of women writers
THE winners of the 2026 Kirkus Prizes in three categories — fiction, non-fiction and young readers’ literature — were announced on Oct. 7, with Tayari Jones’s *Kin* taking the top spot (and US$50,000) in the fiction category.
In the non-fiction category, Pamela Colloff took the top prize for her book Catch the Devil: A True Story of Murder, Deception, and Injustice on the Gulf Coast, while in the young readers’ literature category the award went to Elizabeth Acevedo for Anger is Only a Shadow.
The American book review magazine and website has been awarding the prizes since 2014, with past winners including Hanya Yanagihara, Colson Whitehead, Hernan Diaz and Percival Everett in the fiction category as well as Ta-Nehisi Coates, Rebecca Solnit and Saeed Jones in the non-fiction category.
Closer to home, Winnipeg Swampy Cree author David A. Robertson’s All the Little Monsters: How I Learned to Live with Anxiety was selected as the top book in the young adult/adult category of the First Nations Communities Read for 2026-27.
The book came out on top of the five-book short list, which also included the 15th-anniversary edition of Robertson’s 7 Generations: A Plains Cree Saga, illustrated by Scott B. Henderson.
In the children’s category, Mellisa Mollen Dupuis’s Nutshimit Activity Book, illustrated by Elise Gravel, took the top spot.
The award was launched in 2003 by Ontario’s First Nations Public Library Community, in conjunction with the Ontario Library Service. Each of the authors will receive $5,000.
Another big week of book launches kicks off tonight at McNally Robinson Booksellers’ Grant Park location, with bestselling B.C.-born, New York-based Emily St. John Mandel taking the stage at 7 p.m. tonight in support of her latest novel Exit Party.
The author of Station Eleven, The Glass Hotel and Sea of Tranquility returns with a dual storyline set in the near-future U.S. — one where the country has fractured into numerous smaller countries and city-states, and the other where the country is ruled by an all-powerful dictatorial government.
Mandel will be joined in conversation at the launch by award-winning Winnipeg novelist Joan Thomas. For an interview with Mandel for the Free Press, see today’s arts and life section.
American writer and critic David Treuer lands in Winnipeg on Wednesday, and will be joined at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location at 7 p.m. by Winnipeg author Jenny Heijun Wills to discuss his latest book The Savage Mind: An Indigenous Legacy.
Treuer grew up on Minnesota’s Leech Lake reservation, the child of a Holocaust survivor and Indigenous judge, and in his latest uses his dual perspective to explore dichotomies of freedom and oppression as well as violence, grief and more.
Of note: the Winnipeg launch of Sanna Wani’s poetry collection Lantern, slated to take place on Thursday at 7 p.m. at McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location (and was to include local poets Hannah Green and Chimwemwe Undi), has been cancelled.
B.C.-born, Portland-based novelist Patrick deWitt returns to McNally Robinson’s Grant Park location on Friday at 7 p.m. to unpack his new book Dodge City, which sees a draft-dodging, amphetamine-popping young man careening across the U.S. en route to Canada.
A two-time winner of the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, deWitt’s other acclaimed novels include The Sisters Brothers, French Exit and The Librarianist. He’ll be joined in conversation at the launch by Anna Leventhal.