The Journey Prize (officially called The Writers' Trust of Canada McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize) is a Canadian literary award, presented annually by McClelland and Stewart and the Writers' Trust of Canada for the best short stories published by an emerging writer in a Canadian literary magazine. The award was endowed by James A. Michener, who donated the Canadian royalty earnings from his 1988 novel Journey.[1]
From the award's inception until 2023, a single story was named the winner and received CA$10,000, making it the largest monetary award given in Canada to an up-and-coming writer for a short story or excerpt from a fiction work-in-progress. Since 2023, the award no longer select a single prize winners, and instead all of the 10 writers whose stories are selected for inclusion in the anthology are considered equal winners of the award and receive $1,000 each in prize money.
The prize's winner in 2000, Timothy Taylor, was the first writer ever to have three stories nominated for the award in the same year.[2]
The Journey Prize also publishes an annual anthology of the year's longlisted short stories. Two writers, Andrew MacDonald and David Bergen, have both had a record four total stories selected for inclusion in the annual anthology.
In 2020, the Journey Prize committee announced that the upcoming award would be a special edition devoted exclusively to Black Canadian writers, considering stories published in multiple years.[3] Although the initial report was that the special Black Canadian edition of the award would be presented in 2021 for stories published in 2019, 2020 and 2021,[3] the organizers instead paused the award for 2021 and 2022, and presented a special Black Canadian award in early 2023 to honour works published since 2020.[4]
In 2024, the 25th anniversary of the awards was marked with a special retrospective anthology, edited by Alexander MacLeod and Souvankham Thammavongsa, compiling selected winning and nominated stories from throughout the history of the awards.