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The 2024 Emerging Writer Prize winners announced!

With the Emerging Writer Prize, Rakuten Kobo endeavours to raise the profiles of debut authors by recognizing exceptional books written by first-time Canadian authors in three categories: Literary Fiction, Nonfiction, and one of three types of genre fiction: Romance, Speculative Fiction, or Mystery.

On June 18, 2024, Rakuten Kobo announced the winners of its tenth annual Emerging Writer Prize, in Fiction, Nonfiction, and Mystery. We invite you to get to know the 2024 winners and judges below.

The 2024 Nonfiction Winner

Physicist Jérémie Harris tackles complex questions in conversational and hilarious language. Never in a million years would I have thought I’d be unable to put down a book on quantum mechanics, but this book is a total page-turner that made me question reality, from zombie cats to parallel universes.

— Robyn Doolittle Author and this year's Nonfiction judge

The 2024 Nonfiction Shortlist

The 2024 Literary Fiction Winner

Jamaluddin Aram’s writing evokes striking dissonances and contrasts that toggle between youth and age, between beauty and the grotesque, and between kindness and brutality. The novel’s world is earthy, visceral, sharp-edged, yet also, at times teeters on the brink of hallucination, madness, or, conversely, miracle, in ways that reveal humans’ capacity for belief, and hope.

— Jeanette Lynes Author and this year's Literary Fiction judge

The 2024 Literary Fiction Shortlist

The 2024 Mystery Winner

Ambitious and inventive, The Mythmakers is a page-turner about the boundaries of creative work, memory, and identity. I loved Weir’s assured writing, complex characters, and unexpected twists in this debut.

— Ashley Audrain Novelist and this year's Mystery judge

The 2024 Mystery Shortlist

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