Canisia Lubrin's CODE NOIR Wins the $150,000 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
© Rachel Eliza Griffiths
On May 1, 2025, poet and writer Canisia Lubrin won the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for CODE NOIR (Knopf Canada). The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is the first major English-language literary prize to celebrate creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States, awarding $150,000 USD to its winner, and $12,500 USD to each of its four finalists.
CODE NOIR was edited by Lynn Henry for Knopf Canada. The audiobook was produced in-house at PRH Canada‘s Toronto office studio by Nathaniel McKenzie and directed by Marcia Johnson. To listen to a clip of the audiobook, click here.
About CODE NOIR
Groundbreaking, dazzling debut fiction from one of Canada’s most exciting and admired writers.
Canisia Lubrin’s debut fiction is that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force. Its structure is deceptively simple: it departs from the infamous real-life “Code Noir,” a set of historical decrees originally passed in 1685 by King Louis XIV of France defining the conditions of slavery in the French colonial empire. The original Code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multi-layered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past.
Ranging in style from contemporary realism to dystopia, from futuristic fantasy to historical fiction, this inventive, shape-shifting braid of stories exists far beyond the enclosures of official decrees. This is a timely, daring, virtuosic book by a young literary star. The stories are accompanied by black-and-white drawings—one at the start of each fiction—by acclaimed visual artist Torkwase Dyson.
About Canisia Lubrin
Born in St. Lucia, Lubrin now lives in Whitby, Ontario, and is a poetry editor at McClelland & Stewart. Canisia Lubrin’s books include VOODOO HYPOTHESIS and THE DYZGRAPHXST. Lubrin’s work has been recognized with the Griffin Poetry Prize, OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, the OCM Bocas Prize for Poetry, the Derek Walcott Prize, the Writer’s Trust of Canada Rising Stars prize, and others. Also a finalist for the Trillium Award for Poetry and Governor General’s Literary Award, Lubrin has held fellowships at the Banff Centre, Civitella Ranieri in Italy, Simon Fraser University, Literature Colloquium Berlin, Queen’s University, and Victoria College at University of Toronto. She studied at York University and the University of Guelph, where she now coordinates the Creative Writing MFA in the School of English & Theatre Studies.
In 2021, Lubrin received a Windham-Campbell prize for poetry, and the Globe & Mail named her Poet of the Year. Code Noir: Metamorphoses is her debut fiction, and includes stories listed for the Journey Prize (2019, 2020), Toronto Book Award (2018) and the Shirley Jackson Award (2021).