Mrs. Dunster's Fiction Prize

The Mrs. Dunster's Fiction Prize recognizes the best book of fiction (novels or short stories) published by a New Brunswick resident each year. The $500 prize has been sponsored by Mrs. Dunster's since 2015.

Mrs. Dunster's is locally owned and operated by the Hyslop Family, purchased by Blair and Rosalyn Hyslop in June 2014. Mrs. Dunster's sells donuts and other baked goods across the Maritime provinces and New England. And while the business may have grown over the years, the products produced by Mrs. Dunster's in Sussex still carry that homemade taste — the same way Mrs. Dunster would have made them.

2019 Awards

Winner: Sarah Xarar Murphy
Itzel I: A Tlatelolco Awakening
Guernica Editions

Finalists
Chris Eaton, Symphony No. 3. Book*hug Press.
Susan White, Fear of Drowning. Acorn Press.

2018 Awards

Winner: Raymond Frasier
Through Sunlight and Shadows
Pottersfield Press

Finalists
Meghan Rose Allen, Enid Strange. DCB/Cormorant.
Susan White, Headliner. Acorn.

2017 Awards

Winner: Peter J. Clair
Taapoategl & Pallet
Chapel Street Editions

Finalists
Wayne Curtis, Home Coming. Pottersfield Press.
M.T. Dohaney, Caplin Scull. Pottersfield Press.

2016 Awards

Winner: Kerry-Lee Powell
Willem de Kooning's Paintbrush
HarperCollins

Finalists
Roger Moore, Bistro. Self-published.
Riel Nason, All the Things We Leave Behind. Goose Lane

2015 Awards

Winner: Beth Powning
A Measure of Light
Knopf

Finalists
R.W. Gray, Entropic. Newest Press.​
Mark Anthony Jarman, Knife Party at the Hotel Europa. Goose Lane.


Judges

2022 - Leslie Greentree

Leslie Greentree’s new short story collection, Not the Apocalypse I Was Hoping For, came out in September, 2022 with University of Calgary Press. An earlier short story collection, A Minor Planet for You, won the 2007 Howard O’Hagan Prize for Short Fiction; she is also the author of two poetry books: go-go dancing for Elvis, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Griffin Prize for Poetry, and guys named Bill. Leslie has won CBC literary competitions for short fiction and poetry, and the Sarah Selecky 2013 Little Bird short fiction competition. Leslie co-wrote the play Oral Fixations with her life partner Blaine Newton; it was professionally produced in 2014 by Ignition Theatre. Her essay, “Tom Petty Just Isn't There for You: Riffs on Waiting” appears in Waiting: An Anthology of Essays (University of Alberta Press, 2018). Her essay, Pink Smock Stories, was shortlisted for a Writers Guild of Alberta award and the Humber Creative Nonfiction award.

2021 - Richard Cumyn

2020 - Mark Sampson
2019 - Amy Jones
2018 - David Huebert
2017 - Angie Abdou
2016 - Rabindranath Maharaj
2015 - Lisa Moore

© 2021 Writers' Federation of New Brunswick

Territorial Acknowledgement

The Writers’ Federation of New Brunswick acknowledges that the land on which we live, work and gather is the traditional unceded territory of the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) and Mi’kmaq Peoples, and we honour the spirit of our ancestors’ Treaties of Peace and Friendship.

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