Laura MacGregor Wins 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize for The Invisible Woman

CBC Books, in partnership with the Canada Council for the Arts and Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, has named Laura MacGregor of Waterloo, Ontario the winner of the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize for her essay The Invisible Woman.

Chosen from more than 1,300 submissions, MacGregor’s story stood out to the jury for its unflinching honesty and lyrical power. Along with national recognition, MacGregor receives a $6,000 award from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity, and publication of her winning work on CBC Books. She will also discuss her essay in an upcoming conversation on Bookends with Mattea Roach.

Jurors Zoe Whittall, Danny Ramadan and Helen Knott praised The Invisible Woman as:

“A moving, complex and lyrical exploration of what it means to mother a medically fragile child into adulthood: the exhaustion, anxiety, and grief of the everyday, and the barely contained rage at a system that fails to recognize the value of interdependency or disabled lives... The Invisible Woman captures the heartbreak of service rooted in love when it is fractured during the COVID pandemic as a nurse wonders aloud whether ‘someone like him’ should be permitted access to a ventilator.”

Reflecting on the recognition, MacGregor said:

“The Invisible Woman was my attempt to shift the light to illuminate both the child and the mother, to emphasize the labour and stories of mothers, and to assert that care cannot be a sum-zero game... Winning the CBC Nonfiction Prize gives me the confidence to claim the title of writer, one who has a worthy story to tell.”

Four finalists were also honoured, each receiving $1,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts:

• Rachel Foster (Vancouver, B.C.) – Summer Ash
• Jennifer McGuire (Owen Sound, Ont.) – The First Apartment
• Lena Palacios (Montreal, Que.) – Cancer Stage Exit 4: A Memoir
• Crystal Semaganis (Bear Island, Ont.) – In Case I Die

The French-language counterpart to the prize, the Prix du récit Radio-Canada 2025, was awarded to Marie Sirois for Gestation.

For more information on the CBC Literary Prizes, visit CBCBooks.ca.