Kyle Edwards wins Governor General’s Literary Award for debut

Anishinaabe author Kyle Edwards, a member of Ebb and Flow First Nation who grew up on Lake Manitoba First Nation, has won the 2025 Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction for his debut novel, Small Ceremonies.

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Published in April by McClelland & Stewart, Small Ceremonies follows the plight of two Indigenous teens in Winnipeg’s North End and their struggling hockey team over the course of a year.

Other nominees for the $25,000 prize included Winnipeg Michif author katherena vermette for her novel Real Ones.

“It was honestly such a shock — you don’t really expect things like this to happen when you write a book for the first time,” Edwards says of his win, which was announced Thursday morning.

The 32-year-old Edwards moved to Winnipeg in high school and spent 10 years in the city; he worked as an intern in the Free Press sports department in 2014. He recently moved from California to New York.

“I knew I wanted to write a book one day about hockey players, and I didn’t know what it was going to be about. And I knew from the beginning that I wanted to tell a story from the place I was from — that was really important to me, to show Winnipeg to the rest of Canada, to the rest of the world,” Edwards says.

“The Governor General’s Literary Awards have been around for so long — you know about these awards when you’re trying to become a writer — they kind of linger in the periphery, in the back of your mind, but you don’t really think about them too much, but some of your favourite writers have been honoured with these things — it’s unbelievable when you wake up and realize you’re right there with them,” he says.

“That’s something I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.”

In the drama category Calgary-based Tara Beagan, a member of B.C.’s Coldwater Indian Band, won for her play Rise, Red River, which was inspired by the 2014 Drag the Red movement in Winnipeg; the play was co-produced by Théâtre Cercle Molière, Article 11 and Prairie Theatre Exchange in March 2024.

Other winners included Claire Cameron in the non-fiction category for How to Survive a Bear Attack.

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