The 2025 Writers' Trust Awards were held last week (November 13, 2025) at CBC's Glenn Gould Studio. More than $330,000 was awarded to Canadian writers across their seven literary awards. Author Sheree Fitch was awarded the Matt Cohen Award. The $40,000 prize, supported by Lorraine Greey, recognizes a lifetime of distinguished work by a Canadian writer. Cree-Métis author-illustrator Julie Flett was awarded the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People. The $25,000 prize, supported by the Metcalf Foundation, is awarded annually to an author of an exceptional body of work in children's literature. The jury citations for Fitch and Flett are below.
Matt Cohen Award: In Celebration of a Writing Life — Sheree Fitch
“Sheree Fitch’s first book of nonsense verse for children, Toes in My Nose, came out in 1987 and she has been a full-time writer ever since. Her second children’s book, Sleeping Dragons All Around, won the 1989 Atlantic Booksellers Choice Award. Since then, she has written 19 books for children — ‘I take my nonsense seriously,’ she says — as well as four books for young adults and two books of poetry. She is also a lifelong advocate for children’s literacy. In 1998, the United Nations commissioned her book of poetry, called If You Could Wear My Sneakers: A Book About Children’s Rights, which won the Ontario Library Association’s Silver Birch Award and Atlantic Canada’s Hackmatack Children’s Choice Award.Fitch is the Honorary Patron of the Literary Coalition of New Brunswick, and the Honorary Spokesperson for the Nova Scotia Read to Me program. She has three honorary doctorates and is an Officer of the Order of Canada. Her books, both for children and adults, are exuberant, joyful, and wise, which aptly describes the author herself." —Patsy Aldana, Michelle Good, Wayne Grady, and Hal Wake
Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People — Julie Flett
“Rooted in her Cree-Métis identity and languages, Julie Flett has created a body of work that hums with warmth, beauty, and meaning. Her books are spare and graceful, subtle, yet rich with feeling—offering children bilingual storytelling in which Métis and Cree children are seen and heard and, at the same time, opening new worlds in which non-Indigenous children can explore and delight. Flett invites her young readers to slow down, to listen, to notice. Her stories centre family, community, and the natural world, affirming that these ways of knowing and seeing belong at the very heart of Canada’s story.” —Peter Ho, Susan Perren, and Rebecca Thomas
Two familiar faces to the world of children's literature were also honoured for their adult work. Roza Nozari, known to the children's literature community for her illustrations in books Little People, Big Dreams’ Mindy Kaling, Fluffy and the Stars, and The Anti-Racist Kitchen, was awarded the Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers for her memoir All the Part We Exile. Author Kim Thúy, known to the French-language children's book community for her picture book Le poisson et l'oiseau was awarded the Writers' Trust Engel Findlay Award, a prize given to a mid-career writer in recognition of a remarkable body of work, and in anticipation of future contributions to Canadian literature.
For the complete list of winners, visit writerstrust.com.