The Canada Reads 2026 longlist is here

Notable Canadians who have been panellists include former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Jeopardy! star Mattea Roach, who is now the host of Bookends, Olympians like Donovan Bailey, Mark Tewksbury, Clara Hughes and Maggie Mac Neil, actors Paul Sung Hyung-Lee, Jay Baruchel, and many more.

You can see a complete list of past winners and contenders here.

The 2026 Canada Reads longlist features two authors, Loghan Paylor and Iryn Tushabe, who previously made the longlist for the CBC Nonfiction Prize.

If you’re interested in writing nonfiction, the 2026 CBC Nonfiction Prize is accepting submissions between Jan. 1 and March 1. You can submit your original, unpublished nonfiction for a chance to win $6,000 from the Canada Council for the Arts, a two-week writing residency at Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity and have your story published on CBC Books.

Learn more about the 15 books on the Canada Reads 2026 longlist below. 

If you’d like the Canada Reads books in an accessible format, both The Centre for Equitable Library Access (CELA) and National Network for Equitable Library Service (NNELS) provide books in audio, braille, print braille and text formats. You can find out which formats are available for each of the books here for CELA and here for NNELS. 

A Minor Chorus is a novel that follows an unnamed narrator who abandons his thesis and goes back to his hometown, where he has a series of conversations, bringing modern queer and Indigenous experiences into focus.

Belcourt is a writer and academic from Driftpile Cree Nation in Alberta. Belcourt won the 2018 Griffin Poetry Prize for his first poetry collection, This Wound is a World. It was also a finalist for the 2018 Governor General’s Literary Award for poetry. He is also the author of the memoir A History of My Brief Body, which was nominated for the Governor General’s Literary Award for nonfiction, and the short story collection Coexistence. He currently lives in Vancouver where he teaches creative writing at the University of British Columbia.

In the gothic novel Celestina’s House, Celestina is desperate to get out of her family home after a shocking betrayal makes the atmosphere too tense to bear. When her Lolo gives her a property in Manila’s bohemian district, she feels at home, even though there are ghosts lurking. As time goes on, she gets a real chance at happiness, but voices from the past threaten to take it all away.

Trinidad Gonzalez is an author and communications professional who was born in the Philippines and currently lives in Toronto. Celestina’s House is her first book.

Kaleb Dahlgren was with his junior hockey team, the Humboldt Broncos, on his way to a playoff game when their bus collided with a truck, killing 16 and injuring 13 others. His memoir, Crossroads, details his love for his team and their story. It also explores his life after the tragedy, a time defined by unimaginable grief, and the challenges of overcoming severe brain trauma. Dahlgren writes his story with resilience and positivity, appreciating the outpouring of love and support felt from other Canadians and people around the world.

Dahlgren is an author and community leader from Saskatoon based in Toronto. An advocate for those with Type 1 diabetes, Dalhgren is a champion of positive change in spite of the adversity he faced, and is a chiropractor specializing in athletes.

In the novel Everything is Fine Here, Aine’s world is turned upside down when she begins to suspect that her beloved older sister is gay. In Uganda, homosexuality is illegal, so as happy as Aine is to see her sister Mbabazi find love, she’s caught between disapproving parents, a hostile culture and a desire to see her sister blossom, all while keeping this dangerous secret.

Tushabe is a Ugandan Canadian writer and journalist based in Regina. Her writing has appeared in Briarpatch Magazine, Adda, Grain Magazine, The Walrus and CBC Saskatchewan, among others. She won the City of Regina writing award in both 2020 and 2024, and was a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2021. In 2023, she won the Writers’ Trust McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize. Tushabe was longlisted for the CBC Nonfiction Prize in 2016.

The speculative thriller Foe takes place in an old, isolated farmhouse in the not-so-distant future. The house is inhabited by Junior and his wife Hen, whose peaceful lives are interrupted by the arrival of a man in a business suit. Junior has been randomly selected for a scientific program and will be leaving home for the indefinite future, while his wife stays home with a companion. The shock of this announcement, coupled with his increasingly distant wife and the intruder’s vague explanations, sends Junior in a tailspin as he races to figure out what’s really going on.

Reid is the author of memoirs One Bird’s Choice and The Truth About Luck and the novels I’m Thinking of Ending Things and Foe, which was made into a movie starring Paul Mescal and Saoirse Ronan. His third novel, We Spread, was nominated for a Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction. Reid lives in Kingston, Ont.

Heated Rivalry, a romance novel, tells the story of Shane Hollander, representing team Canada and captain of the Montreal team, and Ilya Rozanov, representing Russia and captain of the Boston team. They’re both at the top of their game and the centre of the hockey’s biggest rivalry, but their secret romance, once casual, is starting to feel like something more. With the pressures of the public eye and the league — in a sport where there’s no gay male representation in the professional ranks — the two feel like they must choose between their love of the game and their love of each other. 

Reid is an author from Nova Scotia, best known for her queer hockey romances. Her previous books include Time To Shine and the Game Changer series, which was adapted into the television series Heated Rivalry.

It’s Different This Time is a romance novel about actor June Wood. When her TV show gets cancelled, she’s got no excuse not to follow up on the mysterious email that invites her back to the New York City brownstone where she lived before moving to Los Angeles. The house was left to her and her former roommate, Adam, by the previous owner. The expensive property will soon be theirs — they just have to live together for four weeks while they finish the paperwork. One catch: June and Adam haven’t spoken in five years and aren’t on great terms. 

Richard is a writer and editorial and social media director. She’s worked at companies like Reese’s Book Club and Netflix. She created and hosts the podcast Three’s Company, Too and has won a Daytime Emmy Award. Born in Toronto, she lives in Los Angeles. It’s Different This Time is her debut book.

In the thriller Julie Chan is Dead, Julie Chan and her identical twin sister, Chloe VanHuusen, are polar opposites and barely communicate after being separated at a young age. But when Chloe, a popular influencer, mysteriously dies, Julie steps in to take her place and is thrust into a glamorous world with millions of followers. However, she quickly learns that Chloe’s seemingly flawless life was far from it, and as she uncovers the sinister cause behind her death, it casts Julie as the next target.

Zhang is a second-generation Chinese Canadian writer who was a former skincare content creator. She holds a psychology and criminology degree from the University of Toronto and splits her time between Vancouver and Toronto. Julie Chan is Dead is Zhang’s debut novel.

In Never Been Better, a rom-com novel, Dee, Misa and Matt became inseparable friends in a psych ward. When Misa and Matt are set to be married at a destination wedding a year after being discharged, Dee arrives with her own form of baggage. She’s in love with Matt, and unlike everyone else attending the wedding, Dee knows how Misa and Matt met.

Telling him how she feels would jeopardize not only their friendships but mutual support systems — but Dee will have to decide what matters most.

Simpson teaches at the University of Toronto. She was Scarborough’s Emerging Writer in 2016 and was nominated for the Journey Prize in 2019. Simpson, who lives with bipolar disorder, is the co-founder of a reflective writing program at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) in Toronto. Never Been Better is her debut novel.

In Oxford Soju Club, a thriller novel, North Korean spymaster Doha Kim is killed without explanation. His protégé, Yohan Kim, only has one clue to figure out what happened to him — his dying words: “Soju Club, Dr. Ryu.” At the same time, Yunah Choi, a Korean American CIA agent, is pulling at threads for her investigation into North Korean spies after an assassination. As the plot lines become more and more entangled, the Soju Club — the only Korean restaurant in Oxford — seems to be at the heart of all the chaos. 

Park is a Korean Canadian writer based in Montreal. He won the 2021 Jim Wong-Chu Emerging Writers Award and did his master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Oxford. He works in marketing in the tech industry. Oxford Soju Club is his debut novel.

Three decades after her family’s restaurant opened, Rachel Phan’s parents are considering retirement. In the memoir Restaurant Kid, Phan reflects on this milestone and shares her experience growing up as the daughter of Chinese immigrants in a small town, from living with parents building a new life to getting to know them as an adult, away from the stress of the restaurant.

Phan is a Toronto-based writer born and raised in a small town in Southern Ontario. Her work has been featured in HuffPost, CBC, the National Post and Maclean’s. She holds a Master of Journalism from the Toronto Metropolitan University. Restaurant Kid is her debut book.

In the novel Searching for Terry Punchout, Adam has one final chance to save his sports writing career: a shot at a Sports Illustrated profile of the notorious hockey goon, Terry Punchout. To complicate matters, Terry is Adam’s estranged father, and writing this piece requires Adam to return to his small, Nova Scotia hometown, and dredge up old feelings and frustrations. As he spends more time with family and friends, he begins to realize that the sleepy town and people he left behind deserve more credit than he ever gave them.

Hellard grew up in P.E.I. and is now based in Calgary. He writes commercial copy, technology criticism and essays that have appeared in THIS Magazine, The Walrus and on CBC Radio. Searching for Terry Punchout is his debut novel, which was shortlisted for the Kobo Emerging Writers Prize and the Amazon First Novel Award.

The novel Slice The Water tells the story of Fred who lives on a lush, tropical island run by a tyrannical king and his military. Under his rule, books are burned, people are starved and people with disabilities are exiled. After the disappearance of his father, Fred becomes part of the resistance and unwittingly becomes a global icon, leading him to be relocated to a seemingly peaceful place by an organization that at first seems to be sympathetic, but is more sinister than previously understood.

PP Wong is an author, screenwriter and editor based in Vancouver. The Life of a Banana was her debut novel and was nominated for the Women’s Prize for Fiction. She got her MFA at the University of British Columbia, where she received the Cordula and Gunter Paetzold Fellowship.

The Cure for Drowning, a historical fiction novel, follows Kit McNair, who was born Kathleen to an Irish farming family in Ontario, and doesn’t fit in with the expectations of a farmgirl set out for them. When Rebekah, a German-Canadian doctor’s daughter comes to town, she, Kit and Kit’s older brother, Landon, find themselves in a love triangle which tears their families apart. All three of them separate and join different war efforts but all eventually return home — and they’ll have to move forward from their challenging and storied past. 

Paylor is an Ontario-born author currently based in B.C. They have an MA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and their short fiction and essays have previously appeared in publications including Room and Prairie Fire. The Cure for Drowning is their debut novel and was longlisted for the 2024 Giller Prize. Paylor was also longlisted for the 2025 CBC Nonfiction Prize.

In the horror novel The Hunger We Pass Down, someone — or something — begins to clean up the house for overwhelmed single mother Alice Chow. While it’s a little unsettling, she’s happy to have extra time to spend with her kids and her mother, who finally decides to open up and share stories about her family history. As the past reveals itself, the family’s demons, both real and subconscious, start to make themselves known. 

Lee is the author of books including the memoir Superfan, which was a finalist for the 2024 Forest of Reading Evergreen Award and the City of Vancouver Book Award, the novel The Conjoined, the nonfiction book Gentleman of the Shade, and the poetry collection The Shadow List. Lee is an editor for ECW Press. She’s from Vancouver’s East Side and currently lives in North Burnaby, B.C.