“Hellions” wins 2026 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction

Julia Elliott has won this year’s Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her short story collection Hellions (Tin House).

The prize jury, made up of Carmen Maria Machado (chair), Ivan Coyote, Cherie Dimaline, Chitra Divakaruni and Deesha Philyaw, said: “This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of Hellions crackles or crawls. Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic. There’s folklore in these stories, and Southern gothic horror, and surrealism, and fantasy, and, at their center, a thread of uneasy, bodily realism. The work evokes writers like Angela Carter, Dorothy Allison, Gloria Naylor, and Kelly Link. But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control; Elliott is a gifted and thrilling writer.”

The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction celebrates “creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States”. The winner receives US$150,000, and each of the prize’s four finalists – which this year included local author and 2026 Stella Prize winner Lee Lai – receives US$12,500.

More information about the award is available on the prize website.

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