The SWG is pleased to announce the winners of the 2026 John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Awards in Literary Nonfiction:
First place: Arlette Seib for Wool Stone and Prairie
Wool Stone and Prairie is an elegantly written manuscript that evokes a detailed and atmospheric sense of place. The author lets us in on a contemporary iteration of the ancient work of tending sheep. Grounded in the daily rhythms of living with the landscape, and grappling with the urgency of climate change, the writing captures the inextricable relation between humans and the natural world.
Tending to a flock of sheep and several dogs equates to daily work outdoors and provides ample experience for Arlette Seib’s writing, which she does mostly indoors, in the early morning. Being a regular witness to solitude and the conversations of nature fuels her appreciation of land, animals, and being well grounded. Wool Stone & Prairie is her debut work, and she has a website under the same title. She resides on a parcel of prairie land in East Central Saskatchewan and likes to leave her phone behind, where it belongs. Every couple of weeks she picks up her mail in the town of Watrous.
Second place: Dwayne Brenna for Amid a Crowd of Stars
Amid a Crowd of Stars is a skillfully written and engaging narrative that explores a settler educator’s slow but crucial learning curve in relation to Indigenous students, colleagues, and literatures. The telling occurs through gripping scenes that cumulatively imbue the work with a novelistic sense.
Dwayne Brenna is an award-winning author of traditionally published books of fiction, short fiction, poetry, and humour, with short stories and poems appearing in Grain, Nine, Intima, The Cold Mountain Review, and The Antigonish Review. His most recent release is The Laundryman (Shadowpaw Press, 2026); a sequel, Wolverine Creek, will appear in 2027. Dwayne’s stage plays have been performed across Canada, and The Adventures of Eddie Gustafson had a five-year run on CBC Radio. Brenna has taught theatre and creative writing at the University of Saskatchewan, acted at the Stratford Festival, and appeared in national and international television programs and movies.
Third place: dee Hobsbawn-Smith for We Carry Our Grief Like Apples and Stones
With close attention to language and literary craft, We Carry Our Grief Like Apples and Stones is an ambitious reckoning with the connections between personal grief and the larger socio-political currents that shape contemporary life. These are essays created with a receptive patience that glows like embers beneath the words.
Poet, essayist, fictionist, and Red Seal chef, dee Hobsbawn-Smith lives rurally, west of Saskatoon. She’s the award-winning author of ten books, most recently Among the Untamed, winner of Saskatchewan Book Awards’ 2024 Poetry Award. Bread & Water: Essays won Saskatchewan Book Awards’ 2022 Nonfiction Award; Taste Canada’s Gold Medal for Culinary Narratives; and was Saskatchewan Library Association’s 2025 One Book One Province selection. dee served as Saskatchewan’s 10th Poet Laureate, and Saskatoon Public Library’s 35th Writer in Residence. She loves her garden, sewing studio, orchids, and trail running. She hopes to learn how to play her guitar before she turns eighty.
Honourable Mention to Mary-Anne Parker for Just a Care Aide
Written in appealingly conversational prose, Just A Care Aide offers an inside perspective on institutional caregiving work. The author conveys day-to-day realities in a practical and compassionate spirit, equally attuned to the humanity of staff and residents.
Our jury consisted of Canadian fiction writers Sadiqa de Meijer and Vinh Nguyen:
Sadiqa de Meijer's latest books are the poetry collection Qaf's People and the essay collection In The Field. Her book alfabet/alphabet won the Governor General’s Award for Non-Fiction, and is forthcoming in French translation. Sadiqa's work has been published in Poetry Magazine, Brick Magazine, and the Best Canadian Poetry and Best Canadian Essays series. She is the current Poet Laureate of Katarokwi/Kingston.
Vinh Nguyen is a writer and educator. He is the author of the speculative memoir The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse, which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Award for Nonfiction, the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Nonfiction Prize, and the Toronto Book Award. He's a nonfiction editor at The New Quarterly.
The awards will be officially presented at the John V. Hicks Long Manuscript Awards in Literary Nonfiction ceremony at the SWG Conference at the DoubleTree by Hilton Hotel in Regina on Friday, October 23, 2026, at 8:15 pm. This is a free public event: all are welcome. The three winners receive awards of $1,000, $650, and $350, respectively and will read from their winning manuscripts. More information about our conference is available here: https://skwriter.com/events-and-workshops/annual-conferenceagm
The SWG congratulates the winners of this year’s Awards and thanks all of our submitting writers.
