Welcome to the Warland Award, formerly known as the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award.

Named in honour of Canadian author Betsy Warland, this yearly award celebrates hybrid genre books published in Canada.

Founded in 2021, this prize previously known as the VMI Betsy Warland Between Genres Award seeks to encourage readers, publishers, and reviewers to increase appreciation of work that may be considered uncategorizable, or perhaps be overlooked or misread because it is innovative in terms of form.

Creative nonfiction writer, poet, essayist, teacher, manuscript consultant, and editor Betsy Warland’s 17 books move beyond and through limitations of genre while creating, inviting, and even forcing new ways of being read. Warland’s texts have contributed greatly to Canadian literary history and continue to influence authors around the world.

The Warland Award is administered by Vancouver Manuscript Intensive, a program pairing authors with mentors.

Announcing the 2025 Longlist

The Warland Award is delighted to announce its 2025 longlist, selected by this year’s judge, Phanuel Antwi.

The submissions represented an exceptionally strong field and reflected the remarkable range, energy, and formal experimentation of hybrid literature in Canada. We are grateful to every writer and publisher who submitted work for consideration, and to Phanuel Antwi for the care and thought he has brought to the judging process.

Congratulations to the 2025 longlisted authors and their publishers:

  • Toxemia by Christine McNair
  • Cop City Swagger by Mercedes Eng
  • Circumtrauma by Jumoke Verissimo
  • No Signal No Noise by A Jamali Rad
  • The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse by Vinh Nguyen
  • Steamy: A Menopause Symptomology by Susan Holbrook
  • Baldwin, Styron, and Me by Mélikah Abdelmoumen
  • To Place a Rabbit by Madhur Anand
  • Subterrane by Valerie Bah
  • The Cree Word for Love (Sâkihitowin) by Tracey Lindberg and George Littlechild

Thank you to the publishers whose commitment to innovative and boundary-crossing work continues to expand the possibilities of Canadian literature.

Meet the 2025 Judge Phanuel Antwi

Photo by Rachel Topham

Phanuel Antwi is a poet, artist, literary cultural critic, and researcher in the field of critical Black studies. He is an associate professor in the Department of English Language and Literatures at the University of British Columbia. In 2022 he was named Canada Research Chair in Black Arts and Epistemologies. He writes, researches, and teaches in critical Black studies, settler colonial studies, Black Atlantic and disapora studies, Canadian literature and culture since 1763, critical race, gender and sexuality studies, and material culture. He has published articles in Small Axe, Interventions, and Studies in Canadian Literature, and has curated art exhibits at the Vancouver Art Gallery and at the Libby Leshgold Gallery at Emily Carr University. His book, On Cuddling: Loved to Death in the Racial Embrace, was published in 2023 by Pluto Press, and he is completing a second book, Currencies of Blackness: Cheerfulness, Faithfulness, and Politeness in Settler Writing.