Winnipeg author Zilla Jones named 2025 Writers' Trust rising star

Allison Graves, Zilla Jones, Dilan Qadir, Liz Stewart and Isabella Wang have been named the 2025 Writers' Trust of Canada's Rising Stars.

Launched successful 2019, the Writers' Trust Rising Stars programme is an inaugural supporting Canadian writers aboriginal successful their careers. Each year, 5 talented emerging writers are chosen and mentored by salient Canadian authors.

The recipients besides person $5,000 and be a two-week self-directed penning residency at Gibraltar Point Centre for the Arts connected the Toronto Islands.

Graves is simply a Newfoundland-based writer and musician. Soft Serve, her debut fabrication collection, was shortlisted for an Atlantic Book Award. Her enactment has appeared successful The Antigonish Review, Riddle Fence Magazine and Room Magazine.

Her fabrication has been longlisted for prizes successful Prism, The Fiddlehead and The Newfoundland Quarterly. She is completing her PhD successful Irish Literature and teaches astatine Memorial University. 

Graves volition beryllium mentored by Michael Crummey. Crummey is the Newfoundland-based writer of The Adversary, which is nominated for the 2025 Dublin Literary Award, The Innocents, Sweetland, Galore and Arguments with Gravity and Passengers. Three of Crummey's novels person been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for fabrication — Sweetland, Galore and The Innocents.

• Michael Crummey's latest caller digs into the interior satellite of power-hungry characters connected the East Coast

"Allison Graves' penning is generous adjacent erstwhile it bites, and it's hilarious arsenic often arsenic it is sobering, which makes her a joyousness to read," said Crummey successful a property statement. 

LISTEN | Michael Crummey talks The Adversary with Shelagh Rogers astatine Woody Point Writers Festival 2023: 

Jones is an author based successful Winnipeg. She's won galore literate awards including the Journey Prize, the Malahat Review Open Season Award, the Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction and the FreeFall abbreviated fabrication award. Her debut novel, The World So Wide, was released successful March 2025. 

Jones made the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize agelong list for Our Father and has longlisted doubly for her story How to Make a Friend, successful 2022 and 2023; in 2024, Jones was included connected the CBC Short Story Prize shortlist. The aforesaid year, Jones made the long database for the CBC Nonfiction Prize.

She was besides named a writer to ticker by CBC Books successful 2024.

• Zilla Jones' debut caller explores a mixed-race woman's hunt for individuality and belonging

The CBC Poetry Prize is unfastened present until June 1. The victor receives $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week penning residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and their enactment volition beryllium published on CBC Books. You tin larn more here. 

Jones volition beryllium mentored by Charlotte Gill, a B.C.-based writer of Indian and English descent. She is the writer of memoirs Almost Brown and Eating Dirt, which won the B.C. National Award for Canadian Nonfiction.

Her abbreviated communicative collection, Ladykiller, was nominated for a  Governor General's Literary Award. She presently teaches penning astatine the University of King's College. She lives successful British Columbia.

• Charlotte Gill explores fraught familial relationships and mixed practice successful her memoir

"Zilla Jones' scenes are ingeniously imagined and beautifully written with rewards that endure agelong aft the past leafage has turned," said Gill a property statement. 

LISTEN | Charlotte Gill discusses her memoir Almost Brown: 

Qadir is simply a Kurdish-Canadian writer based successful Vancouver. His work, which spans poetry, fabrication and nonfiction, has been published in Wax Poetry and Art, Quae Nocent Docent Anthology and The Fiddlehead.

He was longlisted for the Vera Manuel Award for Poetry and received the PEN Canada-Humber College Writers-in-Exile Scholarship. 

Quadir volition beryllium mentored by Rabindranath Maharaj, the writer of respective novels and abbreviated communicative collections. His latest is the abbreviated communicative postulation A Quiet Disappearance. Maharaj's novel The Amazing Absorbing Boy won some the Toronto Book Award and the Trillium Book Award. He has antecedently been nominated for the Commonwealth Writers' Prize, The Chapters First Novel Award and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize. 

In January 2013, helium was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal. His enactment has besides appeared in The Washington Post, The Globe and Mail and The Toronto Star.

• Rabindranath Maharaj reveals his heroes and top achievement

"Dilan Qadir's keen observational eye, his quality to blend humour and trauma, his knowing of the humanities forces that signifier our world, and the authenticity of his penning each evoke admiration," said Qadir successful a property statement.

Stewart is simply a writer from Manitoba who presently lives successful B.C. She won the This Side of West 2021 Prose and Poetry Contest and has been published in Best Canadian Stories 2025, Plenitude Magazine, carte blanche and Camas Magazine.

Stewart volition beryllium mentored by Casey Plett, the author of A Dream of a Woman, Little Fish, A Safe Girl to Love. She is simply a victor of the Amazon First Novel Award, the Firecracker Award for Fiction and a two-time victor of the Lambda Literary Award. Her enactment has besides been nominated for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Plett splits her clip betwixt New York City and Windsor, Ont.

• Casey Plett's latest publication explores the essence of assemblage — and the powerfulness of lived experience

"Liz Stewart's enactment is honorable and beauteous — real, singular, and urgent," said Plett successful a property statement. "Stewart is making thing intimate that anyone tin judge and see."

Wang is the writer of chapbook On Forgetting a Language and Pebble Swing, which was a finalist for the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. She was shortlisted for Arc's Poem of the twelvemonth Content, The Malahat Review's Far Horizons Awards for Poetry and Long Poem Contest, Minola Review's Inaugural Poetry Contest and doubly for the New Quarterly's Edna Staebler Personal Essay Contest.

She lives successful B.C. and directs Revise-Revision Street, a nonprofit editing and mentorship program. 

Wang volition beryllium mentored by Joseph Dandurand, a writer from the Kwantlen First Nation. His collections include The East Side of It All, which was a finalist for the Griffin Poetry Prize, The Rumour, SH:LAM (The Doctor) and I Will Be Corrupted.  He is the manager of the Kwantlen Cultural Centre and the creator manager of the Vancouver Poetry House. In 2019, helium won the Latner Writers' Trust Poetry Prize. 

• Joseph A. Dandurand shares his misery, joyousness and laughter successful poesy postulation The East Side of It All

"Isabella Wang demonstrates immense committedness arsenic she constructs much of herself," said Dandurand successful a property statement. "There volition beryllium large poesy created by specified creativity and resourcefulness." 

The Writers' Trust of Canada is an enactment that supports Canadian writers done literate awards, fellowships, fiscal grants, mentorships and more. It gives retired 11 prizes in recognition of the year's champion successful fiction, nonfiction and abbreviated story, arsenic good arsenic mid-career and beingness accomplishment awards.

The Writers' Trust Rising Stars programme is supported by presenting sponsor BMO Financial Group, Clair Duff successful representation of Catherine Shepard, Deb MacLeod and Ward Sellers, arsenic good as John Terry and Lisa Rochon and the T.R. Meighen Family Foundation.