Leanne Betasamosake Simpson

Jury Citation

“Nibi, or water, maps our lives, encompasses all life. Nibi is elemental, medicinal, necessary, sacred, and ubiquitous. In her radical exploration of water, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson topples anthropocentrism and conventional ontologies to reveal water in all its forms as a powerful decolonizing force that connects us all. A snowflake bonds with a snowbank in a process called sintering, creating a physical bond that doesn’t destroy either; can humans learn to bond with one another and with the land to create resilient and interdependent possibilities? Simpson’s brilliant and sintering weave of story, research, and Nishnaabeg teachings offers a generous and transformative perspective on world-building. Theory of Water shows us how to reimagine life as we know it, embodying hope.”—2025 Hilary Weston Prize Jury (Matthew R. Morris, Lorri Neilsen Glenn, and Niigaan Sinclair) 

Jury Citation

“Leanne Betasamosake Simpson’s genre-defying This Accident of Being Lost is like no other book you will ever read in your life. In a luminous interweaving of Nishnaabeg storytelling, narrative, and poetry, she constructs linked fragments in which the natural world threads through a sharp urban realm and both the sacred and profane coexist. Her intimate fictions are populated with diverse characters—a mother and child at a city ballet, lovers in a sacred boreal forest, a woman attending a firearms training course. Visionary in scope, Simpson creates decolonialized realities where the routine of day-to-day life is alive with ceremony and illumination. These are shimmering stories etched with humour, anger, and above all, love and kindness.” — 2017 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury (Michael Christie, Christy Ann Conlin, and Tracey Lindberg)