Maggie Helwig wins 2026 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing

The Writers’ Trust of Canada has named Maggie Helwig the winner of the 2026 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing for her book Encampment. The prize, presented at the annual Politics and the Pen gala and sponsored by CN, awards $40,000 to the winner, with $5,000 granted to each shortlisted finalist.

In announcing the award, Writers’ Trust executive director David Leonard pointed to the strength of this year’s shortlist and the urgency of the issues it addressed, noting that Helwig’s work stands out for the clarity and compassion it brings to one of the country’s most pressing crises.

Selected by a jury of Norma Dunning, Chantal Hébert, and Paul Wells, Encampment was recognized for its grounded and unflinching look at homelessness in Canada. The jurors praised the book for balancing empathy with clear-eyed analysis, offering an account that resists easy answers while insisting on deeper public understanding.

Helwig, a Toronto-based writer and rector of St. Stephen’s Anglican Church, has published extensively across poetry, fiction, and nonfiction. Her recent work, Encampment: Resistance, Grace, and an Unhoused Community, also received the 2025 Toronto Book Award, further cementing its impact in conversations around housing and social justice.

The 2026 finalists were:

Don Gillmor for On Oil (Biblioasis Field Notes)

Brian Stewart for On the Ground: My Life as a Foreign Correspondent (Simon & Schuster Canada)

Ira Wells for On Book Banning: Or, How the New Censorship Consensus Trivializes Art and Undermines Democracy (Biblioasis Field Notes)

Karin Wells for Women Who Woke up the Law: Inside the Cases that Changed Women's Rights in Canada (Second Story Press)

Now in its 26th year, the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize honours a work of literary nonfiction that engages deeply with political life in Canada and has the potential to shape public conversation. It is presented annually at Politics and the Pen, a flagship fundraising event that has raised more than $8 million in support of Writers’ Trust programming.

More information about the prize, including juror notes and past winners, is available here!

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About Writers’ Trust  

Writers’ Trust of Canada was founded in 1976 by writers — Margaret Atwood, Pierre Berton, Graeme Gibson, Margaret Laurence, and David Young — with a goal to make Canada the best place in the world to be a writer. 50 years later, it is Canada’s leading charitable organization that advances, nurtures, and celebrates Canadian writers and writing. Through a portfolio of programs that includes 14 literary awards, financial grants, career development initiatives for emerging writers, and a residency, Writers’ Trust ensures that readers have the very best Canadian writers to choose from. Writers’ Trust programming is designed to champion excellence in Canadian writing, to improve the status of writers, and to create connections between writers and readers. Canada’s writers receive more financial support from Writers’ Trust than from any other non-governmental organization in the country.