Discovering the top short stories from Canada’s brightest up-and-coming talent

In September 2024, McClelland & Stewart will be publishing a special thirty-fifth anniversary edition of Canada’s most prestigious annual fiction anthology, gathering thirty-one timeless stories from throughout the prize’s history as chosen by Alexander MacLeod and Souvankham Thammavongsa, who are themselves past Journey Prize contributors. These stories speak to the power of the short story and the extraordinary impact the Journey Prize has made and continues to make on Canadian literature. 

Beginning in early 2027, McClelland & Stewart has announced the Journey Prize anthology will become a biennial themed fiction anthology, comprising a combination of previously published submissions and original commissioned short stories. As before, editors of literary magazines from across the country will be invited to submit what, in their view, are the best stories their publications have published by up-and-coming Canadian writers, though now on a given theme. The editors of each Journey Prize volume will also now commission original stories directly from emerging Canadian writers. This dual approach allows for the continued recognition of the vital role literary magazines play in fostering literary voices in Canada, while creating space for McClelland & Stewart and the Journey Prize editors to more proactively and thoughtfully meet the prize’s mandate to identify and support emerging writers, and to bring that talent to a wider readership during the crucial early stages of their careers. Alicia Elliott and Heather O’Neill will be the editors for the first volume of this new iteration of the Journey Prize anthology, which will have a dark fiction theme. A call for submissions to eligible literary magazines is forthcoming this fall.