Saint Lucian writer Canisia Lubrin, has won a major prize for her debut novel Code Noir. She is originally from Jacmel, Anse La Raye/Canaries.
Code Noir is the Winner of The 2025 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction (Knopf Canada/Soft Skull Press).
The USD$150,000 award is the largest English-language literary prize in the world for women and non-binary authors.
The announcement was made at the Chicago History Museum. Members of dynamic literary communities from the U.S. and Canada gathered to celebrate Lubrin’s significant win, as well as the work of Finalists: Dominique Fortier and Rhonda Mullins (translator), Miranda July, Sarah Manguso, and Aube Rey Lescure.
Of the winning title, the Jury, made up of Diana Abu-Jaber (Jury Chair), Norma Dunning, Kim Fu, Tessa McWatt, and Jeanne Thornton shared:
“Code Noir contains multitudes. Its characters inhabit multi-layered landscapes of the past, present and future, confronting suffering, communion and metamorphosis. Canisia Lubrin’s prose is polyphonic; the stories invite you to immerse yourself in both the real and the speculative, in the intimate and in sweeping moments of history. Riffing on the Napoleonic decree, Lubrin retunes the legacies of slavery, colonialism and violence. This is a virtuoso collection that breaks new ground in short fiction.”
Canisia Lubrin’s books include Voodoo Hypothesis and The Dyzgraphxst. Lubrin’s work has been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, OCM Bocas Prize, the Writers’ Trust of Canada Rising Stars award, and others. In 2021, Lubrin received a Windham-Campbell prize for poetry. The stories in Code Noir are accompanied by black-and-white drawings by acclaimed visual artist Torkwase Dyson.
Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin lives in Whitby, Ontario, and coordinates the Creative Writing MFA at the University of Guelph. This book references Saint Lucia and many of its rural areas in many of the stories.
“From everyone at the Carol Shields Prize, we offer our warmest congratulations to Canisia Lubrin on her win for Code Noir “ said Alexandra Skoczylas, CEO of the Carol Shields Prize Foundation. “It is a groundbreaking work of fiction selected from an incredibly strong shortlist.”