May 1, 2025, 8:45pm
Today, at a live event at the Chicago History Museum, Canisia Lubrin was named the winner of the 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction—which honors exceptional novels, short story collections, and graphic novels by women and non-binary writers in the U.S. and Canada—for her book Code Noir (Knopf Canada/Soft Skull Press).
The jury was comprised of Diana Abu-Jaber (Chair), Norma Dunning, Kim Fu, Tessa McWatt, and Jeanne Thornton. Here’s what they had to say about the winning title:
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. Riffing on the Napoleonic decree, Lubrin retunes the legacies of slavery, colonialism and violence. This is a virtuoso collection that breaks new ground in short fiction.
Lubrin will receive an award of $150,000 and a five-night stay at Fogo Island Inn. The other writers on the shortlist will each receive $12,500.