The 39th annual Trillium Book Award ceremony, held June 10 at the Fairmont Royal York, brought together Ontario's finest literary voices for an unforgettable evening. Kingston-based author Otoniya J. Okot Bitek won the English Book Award for her debut novel We, the Kindling, a spare and devastating story of women who survived abduction by the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda. Broadcaster Heather Hiscox MCed with warmth and wit, and 16 remarkable finalists made this one of the most compelling editions in the award's 39-year history.
The Imperial Ballroom at the Fairmont Royal York Hotel has hosted its share of grand occasions. On June 10, it was the turn of the storytellers. The 39th annual Trillium Book Award ceremony, presented by Ontario Creates, drew readers, writers, publishers and supporters of the literary arts for an evening that felt both celebratory and necessary.
Karen Thorne-Stone, President and CEO of Ontario Creates, opened the proceedings with remarks that framed the evening squarely around the kinds of books being honoured.
"From trauma, survival and shared female experiences to identity, belonging, silence and shame, the 2026 Trillium Book Award winners are powerful reminders of what it means to endure and rebuild in worlds shaped by violence, expectation and vulnerability," she said. "Celebrating this year's Ontario Trillium Book Award winners amplifies the voices and stories that define the province's literary landscape and cultural memory."
Aaron Campbell, Chair of Ontario Creates, underlined the broader significance of the awards. "Through the annual Trillium Book Awards, we ensure that bold, necessary storytelling continues to be supported, shared and brought into wider public conversation," he said. "I'm consistently amazed by both the diversity and creative content produced by the authors and publishers who continue to prove the strength and prosperity of Ontario's creative economy."
Heather Hiscox sets the tone
Journalist and broadcaster Heather Hiscox, who spent more than two decades as host of CBC's Morning Live before stepping back seven months ago, took the stage as MC with the kind of frank self-awareness that immediately put the room at ease. She acknowledged the transition with humour: A wise businessman had warned her she would need to go from "who's who to who's she." Standing in the Imperial Ballroom, she seemed unbothered by the prospect.
Hiscox spoke about a recent conversation she had with Margaret Atwood, who has won the Trillium three times. The interview centred on Atwood's memoir, but their discussion ranged to Expo 67 and the cultural confidence it seeded in a generation of Canadian writers. Hiscox brought that context into the present: with a renewed sense of national pride taking hold across Canada, she asked whether this moment might produce a similar artistic flowering.
"I hope it does," she told the room. "The eminent writers in this room will be well placed and well equipped to lead that work."
She also made time to acknowledge what keeps the literary ecosystem running day to day. The independent bookstore, she noted, remains the living heart of any literary community. The English-language books distributed during the evening were provided by Ben McNally Books, one of Toronto's most respected indie booksellers, while the French-language titles came from Librairie il était une fois. "Our indie booksellers host readings, introduce new voices to curious readers and keep our literary community connected," she said.
Hiscox had one more surprise. She shared a short original poem she had written especially for the evening, inspired by a wardrobe mishap she had suffered in the very same Imperial Room four years prior. The room laughed. It was a reminder of why live literary events still hold something no other format can replicate.
This year, 375 books were submitted for Trillium consideration, across both English and French. The juries undertaking the work of reviewing all of them, she observed, had taken on something genuinely Herculean.
We, the Kindling and the win that resonated
When Aaron Campbell joined Hiscox on stage to announce the English Book Award winner, the name Otoniya J. Okot Bitek drew a response that felt earned. Her debut novel, We, the Kindling, published by Alchemy, an imprint of Knopf Canada at Penguin Random House Canada, follows three survivors of the Lord's Resistance Army as they navigate their haunted past and present lives in Uganda.
In the novel, we meet Miriam, Helen and Maggie, three friends who, years earlier, as schoolchildren, survived capture by the Lord's Resistance Army in northern Uganda. Now, as the women go about their new lives in the city, shopping, caring for their children, planning and thinking about what the future might hold, we come to understand how deeply their past haunts the present. In graceful yet unflinching prose, Okot Bitek weaves vivid folk tales with taut realism, revealing flashes of life before the war, unspooling the terrible events that led to abductions of children from supposedly safe schools, and tracing perilous journeys home again.
The book arrived with considerable momentum. It was longlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize, shortlisted for the 2025 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, named one of the Globe and Mail's Best Books of 2025 and included in CBC's Best Canadian Fiction of 2025. The Trillium win puts it firmly in the company of the most significant Canadian novels of the decade.
The editor behind the book is Lynn Henry, Publishing Director of Alchemy and Editor-in-Chief at Knopf Canada, whose contribution Okot Bitek acknowledged with particular warmth in her acceptance speech.
Okot Bitek's remarks were quietly extraordinary. She began by thanking writer Dionne Brand: "Thank you for seeing this book for what it could be." She singled out Lynn Henry: "Thank you, Lynn, for polishing it like a diamond." She credited Erin Baines at UBC for first introducing her to the women from northern Uganda whose real experiences inspired the fiction. "They wanted their stories to be told," she said, "and so this is such a privilege, to be able to sit and listen, write, talk to people and write their stories."
On her own journey to this moment, she was characteristically direct:
"It's a hell of a thing to move to Ontario five years ago. I thought it would take 100 years before anyone knew who I was, but here we are."
She thanked Katherine McKittrick and Kristin Moriah, both prominent Black Studies scholars at Queen's University in Kingston, for welcoming her and giving her the space to finish the book. She closed by thanking her son Koju, who had come from Toronto for the evening with his sister. "They're the ones who ground me so that I don't fly away."
Otoniya J. Okot Bitek writes poetry and fiction. Her first collection, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection, A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her most recent poetry collection, Song & Dread, is published by Talonbooks. Born in Kenya to Ugandan parents, she has lived in Canada for more than three decades. We, the Kindling is her first novel.
The other 2026 winners
The evening honoured excellence across all four Trillium categories. The complete list of winners:
- English Book Award: We, the Kindling by Otoniya J. Okot Bitek (Kingston, ON) — Penguin Random House Canada
- English Poetry Book Award: Revolutions by Hajer Mirwali (Toronto, ON) — Talonbooks
- French Poetry Book Award: Haus by Lisa L'Heureux (Ottawa, ON) — Prise de parole
- French Book Award: Maman bleue by Sarah Migneron (Ottawa, ON) — Prise de parole
Revolutions sifts through the grains of Muslim daughterhood to explore two metaphorical circles that overlap: shame and pleasure. Hajer Mirwali is a Palestinian-Iraqi writer living in Toronto. Her debut collection asks difficult questions about identity, community and the cost of belonging, and the jury's recognition of it signals a continuing expansion of whose stories the Trillium takes seriously.
Haus, Lisa L'Heureux's debut poetry collection, contains activist verse that exposes the brutality of violence against women and marginalized people. Straddling the line between condemnation and hope, it brings to light, in fragments, lives that have been silenced for too long, and exposes the pervasive culture of impunity.
The 2026 finalists
This year's 16 finalists represent a diverse range of Ontario's English- and French-language authors. The complete shortlists:
English Book Award:
- We Breed Lions by Rick Westhead
- You Will Not Kill Our Imagination by Saeed Teebi
- Julie Chan Is Dead by Liann Zhang
- Suddenly Light by Nina Dunic
English Poetry Award:
- Shadow Price by Farah Ghafoor (House of Anansi Press)
- The World After Rain by Canisia Lubrin (McClelland & Stewart)
French Book Award (Prix Trillium):
- Mes morts jeune by Sylvie Bérard
- Des silences et des murmures by Maéva Guedjeu
- Les visages de Rembrandt by Alain Bernard Marchand
- L'équation avant la nuit by Blaise Ndala
French Poetry Award:
- L'épingle filante by Noémie Roy
- En terrain miné by Véronique Sylvain
Why the Trillium matters now
The Trillium Book Award has recognized Ontario literary excellence since 1987, and its 39th edition arrived at a moment when questions of Canadian identity, national confidence and whose stories deserve amplification feel unusually alive. Heather Hiscox named that directly; the writers in that room are the ones positioned to do the cultural work this moment is asking for. The fact that this year's winners deal so directly with violence, survival, silence and belonging gives the awards a particular resonance beyond the ceremony itself.
June is Pride Month, and Hiscox noted that the Trillium's mandate to champion diverse voices carries that same spirit of protection and celebration. Book award winners receive $20,000, with their publishers receiving $2,500 for marketing and promotion. Poetry book winners receive $10,000. Ontario is home to the country's largest book publishing industry, contributing $980 million to the economy and supporting over 6,000 jobs each year.
Stories that stay
What the evening at the Fairmont Royal York demonstrated is that literature, when it's working, asks something of its reader. We, the Kindling, ask readers to sit with Miriam, Helen and Maggie and not look away. Otoniya J. Okot Bitek spent decades as a poet building exactly the tools she needed to make that ask feel like a privilege rather than a demand. The Trillium gave the book the audience it had earned.
The ceremony closed as it should: with the writers back at the centre, and the room already thinking about what to read next.
