Téa Mutonji

Jury Citation

“Witty, moving, and fiercely authentic, My Person is a unique portrait of millennial life, of the struggle of the urban creative, and of the complex realities of interracial relationships. At its core is a tense but longstanding friendship pressed to rupture by accumulated histories of reliance and betrayal. Above all, My Person is a triumph of honest writing, a gifting of deep artistic attention to the oftentimes misrepresented young women of the here and now.”—2026 Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Jury (David Chariandy, Conor Kerr, Kathleen Winter) 

Jury Citation

"Téa Mutonji’s Shut Up You’re Pretty is a fiercely intelligent collection about the inner lives of young women, examining abortion, family conflict, and the emergence of sexual identity. In writing marked by bursts of intense language, Mutonji takes the reader into her nuanced study of a young Congolese immigrant, always refusing to look away from pain and uncertainty. Driven by its crisp, unsettling dialogue and meticulous psychological detail, this is a compelling work about the fear and yearning of our youth." — 2019 Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize Jury (Dennis Bock, Michael Kaan, and Suzette Mayr)