BC editors shortlisted for prize
November 03rd, 2026
The Writers’ Trust of Canada has announced the shortlist for the inaugural Nancy Flight Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction Editing, with two BC-based editors among the three finalists. The $25,000 annual prize recognizes outstanding editorial guidance and structural craftsmanship in Canadian literary nonfiction. The winner will be announced on November 10 at the Writers’ Trust Awards.
Jury Citations
George Galt (Victoria, BC)
For editing My Year in Fairyland: Grief, MAID and a Lifetime of Books by Sarah Ellis (Stonehewer Books)
“With Sarah Ellis’ remarkable and moving My Year in Fairyland, editor George Galt faced the unique challenge of working with a highly prolific author who is also a highly reluctant memoirist. Through humour, gentle prodding, deep sympathy, and respect, Galt drew out Ellis’ remembrances of the twelve months before her wife Sherry’s medically assisted death. The deceptively slim book contains profound reflections about what it means to live and love well. Ellis’ enchanting diversions into fairy tales and mythology, her later-in-life romance and unexpected wedding, the ethics of MAID, and the lessons of grief are adroitly woven together with Galt’s delicate, steady guidance.” — Jury Citation (Rachel Giese, Craig Pyette, Rachel Taylor)
Rachel Rose (Vancouver, BC)
For editing Humanitarienne: A Doctor’s Stories from the Conflict Zone by Kirsten Johnson, MD (Douglas & McIntyre)
“Of the many evident talents that editor Rachel Rose brought to Kirsten Johnson’s powerhouse of a memoir, Humanitarienne, a deft sense of balance orients every page. Heartrending accounts from crisis zones around the world evolve alongside the author’s personal growth into the rare leader capable of confronting such horror; moral confusion is faced with principled determination; guilt and victimhood tangle inseparably but cannot trip up the forward march of hope and love — and all of it flows as naturally across the page as life itself. There is no doubt, Humanitarienne owes much of its compulsive readability, intellectual heft, and moral power to the judicious guidance and steady hand of its exceptional editor.” — Jury Citation (Rachel Giese, Craig Pyette, Rachel Taylor)
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