The Mrs. Dunster's Fiction Prize recognizes the best book of fiction (novels or short story collections  - no anthologies, please) 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.

2023 Awards

Lisa Alward, Cocktail (Biblioasis, 2023)

Judge's comments: It’s difficult to know what exactly draws one so deeply into Lisa Alward’s stories. She writes with the broad strokes of a novelist, yet her true, complex, fleshed out characters evokes the tension of some family drama playing itself out at one’s supper table.  Indeed, after finishing each of the twelve short stories in this collection, I was left feeling as though I had travelled through the familiar, yet darkened backstreets of my own town, observing its familiar and ordinary folk turn extraordinary when caught in their variances of the human conditions.

Finalists:

Luke Francis Beirne, Blacklion (Baraka Books, 2023), Saint John

Valerie Sherrard, Standing on Neptune (DCB Cormorant, 2023), Miramichi

2022 Awards

Winner: Lee D. Thompson,

APastoral: A Mistopia

Corona/Samizdat

Judge's comments: A sleepy sheep wakes to a lingering sense of injustice. His first target is a rooster. And with that, we are swept into a ridiculous, rollicking read, a biting satire of penal systems and performative justice that skewers its victims and their advocates as cleanly as it does the authors of a system that would surgically insert the brains of convicts into farm animals. Lee D. Thompson’s writing is propulsive and inventive, bursting with energy, wit, and silliness. In his hands, we embrace the absurdity of serial killers in swine, of farm justice aided and abetted by goats and border collies. We cheer on Bones’ integration of his human and ovine selves as much as we do his mad dash for freedom. Apastoral is a wild and joyful ride – readers will never pass a sheep again without checking for a purse. 

Finalists
Meghan Rose Allen, The Summer the School Burned Down. Independent.
Valerie Sherrard, A Bend in the Breeze. DCB Cormorant

2021 Awards

Winner: Beth Powning,

The Sister's Tale

Knopf Canada

Judge's Comments: 

One of the characters in The Sister’s Tale builds miniature replicas of some of the grand houses in the fictional community of Pleasant Valley, New Brunswick. Similarly, the novel itself, set in the late 1880s, is a meticulously rendered imagining of one household at a pivotal point in the province’s social and legal evolution. Balanced and precise, the prose ushers the reader into a bygone world that couldn’t feel more current or more urgent.

Finalists
Amber McMillan, The Running Trees. Goose Lane.
Valerie Sherrard, Birdspell. DCB Cormorant

2020 Awards

Winner: Riel Nason

Waiting Under Water

Scholastic Canada

Judge's Comments: 

Riel Nason's Waiting under Water is nothing short of devastating. Right from its opening chapter, Nason pulls us into the incredible voice of her protagonist, Hope, a girl who loves her hometown even as she faces the possibility of having to leave it behind. This book may be labeled YA, but Mom and Dad will definitely want to filch this one from the kids once they're done with it. A touching, funny, satisfying read from top to bottom.

Finalists
Mark Anthony Jarman, Czech Techno, Anvil Press.
Kathleen Peacock, You Were Never Here. Harper Teen

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.