Three Finalists Announced for the Writers’ Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize

The Writers’ Trust of Canada has revealed the finalists for the 2025 Dayne Ogilvie Prize for LGBTQ2S+ Emerging Writers, a $12,000 award that shines a spotlight on powerful debut voices from across the country.

Chosen from 27 books published by 25 different Canadian presses, this year’s three finalists bring urgent, unforgettable explorations of queerness, identity, and belonging to the page. Each writer will receive $2,000, with the overall winner to be announced on November 13 at the Writers’ Trust Awards in Toronto.

The 2025 Dayne Ogilvie Prize finalists are:

Tea Gerbeza (Regina) for How I Bend Into More (Palimpsest Press)
Gerbeza’s debut long poem unfolds with precision and care, exploring disability, queerness, migration, and family love in luminous detail. How I Bend Into More bends language and image into a powerful act of reclamation and reimagines the disabled body against a backdrop of shame and ableism.

Roza Nozari (Toronto) for All the Parts We Exile (Knopf Canada)
In a memoir full of wit and tenderness, Nozari writes of being a queer, Iranian, Muslim woman in Canada. Their fearless debut is a moving portrait of resilience and authenticity, a story of healing and connection that resonates across cultures and generations.

Ziyad Saadi (Vancouver) for Three Parties (Hamish Hamilton Canada)
Saadi’s novel captures a single day in the life of a protagonist poised to reveal his true queer self. Witty, heartbreaking, and layered with the history of displacement, assimilation, and family silence, Three Parties is both an intimate coming-out story and a sweeping exploration of memory and destiny.

Executive director of the Writers’ Trust, David Leonard, praised the finalists’ boldness and artistry: “This year’s finalists offer daring, deeply nuanced explorations of identity — from negotiating with culture, body, and community, to the ways these forces shape the self. Every Canadian should watch these authors.”

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About the Dayne Ogilvie Prize

The Dayne Ogilvie Prize was established in 2007 by Robin Pacific in memory of her friend, editor and literary manager Dayne Ogilvie. It honours outstanding debut books by LGBTQ2S+ writers of any age and in any genre. Books published between October 1, 2024 and September 30, 2025 were eligible for this year’s prize. Past winners include Michael V. Smith, Zoe Whittall, Farzana Doctor, Kai Cheng Thom, Jillian Christmas, francesca ekwuyasi, Anuja Varghese, and most recently, Anthony Oliveira. The prize is supported by the Dayne Ogilvie Endowment Fund, Anuja Varghese, and the Writers’ Trust Prize Fund.

About Writers’ Trust of Canada

Writers’ Trust of Canada is a charitable organization that advances, nurtures, and celebrates Canadian writers and writing through a portfolio of programs including 11 national literary awards, financial grants, career development initiatives for emerging writers, and a writers’ residency. 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. Additional information is available at writerstrust.com.