Toronto/CMEDIA: The power of storytelling and the importance of literature was reportedly celebrated jointly by the City of Toronto and Toronto Public Library through the 2025 annual Toronto Book Awards.
Honouring works that capture Toronto’s spirit, reflecting its diversity and deepening understanding of life in the city, since 1974 the Toronto Book awards have recognized the vital role literature plays in building empathy, sparking dialogue and connecting communities.
This year’s winner Maggie Helwig was announced earlier this evening at a special event at the Toronto Reference Library, presented with the Toronto Public Library.
Helwig was awarded the 2025 Toronto Book Award for Encampment: Resistance, Grace and an Unhoused Community, published by Coach House Books.
“We are thrilled to congratulate and celebrate Maggie Helwig, this year’s Toronto Book Award winner. Her remarkable book Encampment: Resistance, Grace and an Unhoused Community exemplifies the kind of compelling, thought-provoking writing that inspires readers and future writers alike, and has deeply resonated with readers in our community. I hope that Torontonians will add this book to their reading list,” Moe Hosseini-Ara, City Librarian, Toronto Public Library said.
Encampment: Resistance, Grace and an Unhoused Community has been praised by the jury — which included Canadian literary voices and advocates Sam Hiyate, Sophie Jai, Wanda Nanibush, Don Oravec and David Silverberg — as “a difficult book to put down once you start reading and impossible to forget once you finish. Helwig’s exceptional storytelling compels us to care.”
The winning author will receive a prize of $20,000 and shortlisted finalists will each receive $2,000.
Having been an Anglican priest at St. Stephen’s-in-the-Fields since 2013, Helwig is the author of 15 books and chapbooks, including Girls Fall Down (Coach House, 2008), which was shortlisted for the Toronto Book Award and chosen as the One Book Toronto selection in 2012.
Encampment was chosen from a list of finalists that included:
- ‘All the Parts We Exile’ by Roza Nozari (Knopf Canada)
- ‘Other Worlds’ by André Alexis (McClelland & Stewart)
- ‘The Knowing’ by Tanya Talaga (Harper Collins Canada)
- ‘The Migrant Rain Falls in Reverse’ by Vinh Nguyen (Harper Collins Canada)
- ‘Unlike The Rest’ by Chika Stacey Oriuwa (Harper Collins Canada)
A reading list of the shortlisted titles is available on Toronto Public Library’s webpage: www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/tba/
More information about the awards is available at www.toronto.ca/bookawards
