December 2025 newsletter
issue 12, volume 22
Early Bird discount on now—$15 off entry fee!
Our biennial Novella Prize is back, but not for long. Submit your 10,000- to 20,000-word stories for a chance to win $2,000 and publication in our summer issue. Early Bird deadline is December 31, 2025. Final deadline is February 1, 2026.
This year’s judges:
Rob Benvie
Liz Harmer
Read interviews with them below.
Early Bird entry fee (until December 31, 2025):
CAD $20 for each entry from Canada
CAD $30 for each entry from elsewhere
CAD $15 for each additional entry, no limit
Juls Macdonell interviews Rob Benvie, Novella Prize judge
JM: What are you hoping to find in a winning entry?
RB: I think a lot about the relationship between the act of reading and the flow of “real world” time, and how the duration required to get through it affects the readerly experience it generates. […]
As far as a winning entry, I just hope to find some entries that take chances. Your therapy journal is undoubtedly great for your mental wellbeing, but you should probably keep that to yourself. If you’re taking the time and effort to enter a contest, then your writing should be, at least on some level, an effort to engage/enrage/entertain/offend. Use the full extent of your authorial powers to make a dent in the reader’s consciousness. Rock our worlds! Also: use ellipses sparingly and no funky fonts.
Kaelyn Abrahamson interviews Liz Harmer, Novella Prize judge
KA: What do you find special about the form of the novella? Are there any elements that you particularly appreciate?
LH: I think each length—from flash fiction to the super-long novel—ends up creating its own rules, limits, expectations. To me that is really exciting. A novella gives you more room than a story to develop characters and ideas but has some of the sharp snap of a short story.
L’Amour Lisik interviews Brett Nelson, issue #232 fiction contributor
LL: Duality recurs throughout “Man Camp,” from Noah’s previous job at a gay bar in Vancouver to heavy machinery work in an unnamed remote area in Alberta. Meanwhile, it feels like he must choose between financial and romantic freedom, never able to have both. What drew you to this theme of juxtaposition? Can you talk more about the other themes of safety and assimilation, queerness and masculinity?
BN: I come from a smaller industrial town and live in Vancouver, so I spend a lot of time thinking about the tensions that can exist within people and places. To me, the themes of safety and assimilation come from the gap between your perception of your identity and others’ perceptions of it, and in which direction that gap is closed.
I think queerness and masculinity both reflect the ways in which people feel pressured to conform and assimilate, as you noted earlier. I’m always kind of interested in exploring what kinds of queerness are “allowed” to exist in masculine spaces, and vice versa.
launch party for winter issue #233 Indigenous Storytelling
Join us for an evening of celebration as we launch our much-anticipated special issue! Inhale/Exhale: Contemporary Indigenous Storytelling, guest edited by Richard Van Camp, features work by emerging and early- to mid-career Indigenous storytellers and artists living in or hailing from the nation state known as “Canada.”
when: Thursday, January 22 at 7:00pm
where: University of Victoria, Mearns Centre for Learning—McPherson Library, enter the main library doors and turn right
what: free entry, food, and mingling
transportation: Many busses end their routes at the University of Victoria. Please reference the BC Transit website for route and fare info. Pay parking, including accessible parking, is available in nearby Parking Lots B and C for $5 for the evening. Free parking is located on Cedar Hill X Road between University Drive and Crestview Road, a 10- to 15-minute walk from the university.
For 80 years, The Fiddlehead has championed the voices of emerging and established writers from Canada and beyond. Subscribers receive four print issues a year, bringing our literary tradition right to your door. https://thefiddlehead.ca/subscribe-today
Perfect for loved ones living abroad (we ship anywhere), minimalist literary friends (they can drop the latest issue in a little free library once they've read it), or your New Year's resolution to read and write more (and submit more). https://store.malahatreview.ca/product/print-subscriptions/
latest issue: fall #232
Featuring Far Horizons Award for Short Fiction winner Gladwell Pamba.
Cover art by Chukwudubem Ukaigwe.
Poetry by Daniel Naawenkangua Abukuri, Ambrose Albert, Isobel Burke, George Elliott Clarke, Marlene Cookshaw, Guy Elston, John Lent, Edward Luetkehoelter, Ismail Yusuf Olumoh, Elizabeth Philips, Ben Robinson, Mark Truscott, and Jade Wallace.
Fiction by Daryl Bruce, Brett Nelson, and Jean-Christophe Réhel (translated from the French by Neil Smith).
Creative nonfiction by Paul Dhillon and Karine Hack.
Reviews of new books by Tree Abraham, Manahil Bandukwala, Michael Chang, Mavis Gallant (edited by Neil Besner, Marta Dvorák, and Bill Richardson), Bill Gaston, Meredith Hambrock, Susan Juby, Kathy Page, Karolina Ramqvist (translated by Saskia Vogel), Karen Solie, and Clea Young.