The winner is decided by a jury of three to five Canadian authors who are all previous Giller Prize contenders. They read over 100 books, published between Oct. 1, 2024, and Sept. 30, 2025, to pick the 14-book long list and then narrowed it down to the five-book short list.
This year, the jury is chaired by Dionne Irving, author of The Islands, which was shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2023. Irving is from Mississauga, Ont., and is currently a creative writing professor at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana.
The other jury members are Loghan Paylor and Deepa Rajagopalan. Paylor, based in Abbotsford, B.C., was on the long list for the 2024 Giller Prize for their debut novel The Cure for Drowning.
Rajagopalan, based in Toronto, was on last year’s short list for her short story collection Peacocks of Instagram.
