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The Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction is a unique award — the only one offered in Canada for the genre. Established in 1991 by writer and literary journalist Edna Staebler, it recognizes a Canadian writer of a first or second published book with a Canadian locale and/or significance.
Creative nonfiction is literary not journalistic. The writer does not merely give information but intimately shares an experience with the reader by telling a factual story using the devices of fiction, including:
Rather than emphasizing objectivity, the book should have feeling, and should be a compelling, engaging read.
From the earliest days, Canadian nonfiction writers have been recording their experiences in imaginative ways. The genre has firm roots in the work of Susannah Moody, Farley Mowat, Pierre Berton, Marion Fowler, Harold Horwood, and Edna Staebler herself.
The winner of the 2024 award is Brett Popplewell for Outsider: An Old Man, a Mountain and the Search for a Hidden Past. Please join us in celebrating Popplewell on April 3, 2025, at Laurier's Waterloo campus. Reserve your free ticket today!
A seal for the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction was commissioned in 2023 to help promote the award and the high quality of its winning books to readers, book-buyers, and librarians. The seal was designed by Romana Biederman.
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Award for Creative Non-Fiction
Writer-in-Residence Program