Skip to main content

Prairie Fire A Canadian Magazine Of New Writing
Subscribe
Donate
Subscribe
Donate

The 2025 McNally Robinson Booksellers Poetry, Short Fiction and Creative Non-Fiction Contests

Prairie Fire Press and McNally Robinson Booksellers present our 2025 Annual Writing Contests!

Although our deadline is November 30, 2025 (postmarked, if mailed), you may submit anytime. By entering our contests you have a chance to win:

  • One cash prize of $1250 is awarded in each of the three categories, as well as one Honourable Mention per category.
  • Winning pieces are published in Prairie Fire’s summer issue.
  • An invitation to THIN AIR either in-person or virtually (produced by the Winnipeg International Writers Festival, subject to festival funding)
  • With your contest submission you’ll receive a one-year subscription to Prairie Fire, so if you would like to start reading Prairie Fire as soon as possible, you can send in your entry today!

 

Entries by email are accepted.

Please email submission to prfire@prairiefire.ca and pay via PayPal or by phoning in a credit card immediately before or after submitting your entry.

Entry Fee: $34 (comes with a 1-year subscription to Prairie Fire)

Image shows contest information, three copies of past contest issues, the PF and McNally Robinson Booksellers logo and an illustration of a typewriter with leaves coming out the back.<br /> Text: McNally Robinson Booksellers & Prairie Fire Writing Contests<br /> 2025 Annual Writing Contests<br /> $3750 in cash prizes! One cash prize of $1250 in each category.<br /> MRB Poetry Contest (up to three poems per entry, max. 150 lines total) Judge: Tolu Oloruntoba<br /> MRB Short Fiction Contest (one piece per entry, max 5000 words) Judge: Shashi Bhat<br /> MRB Creative Non-Fiction Contest (one piece per entry, max 5000 words) Judge: Basma Kavanagh<br /> Deadline: Nov. 30, 2025<br /> Fee: $34 per entry, which includes a one-year subscription to Prairie Fire.<br /> Complete guidelines at prairiefire.ca. For inquiries: prfire@prairiefire.ca<br />

Contest Rules

  • Entry fee: $34. This entitles you to a one-year (4 issues) subscription to Prairie Fire magazine. If you are emailing your submission, please send to prfire@prairiefire.ca and pay via PayPal or by phoning in a credit card immediately before or after submitting your entry. 
  • One fiction entry consists of one story, maximum 5,000 words.
  • One poetry entry consists of up to three poems, maximum length of your poetry submission should not exceed 150 lines, regardless of whether you are sending 1, 2 or 3 poems. 
  • One creative non-fiction entry consists of one piece, maximum 5,000 words.
  • Submitting Fiction or Creative Non-Fiction? Please state which category you are entering.

  • Deadline: November 30, 2025 (11:59:59pm CST)

  • Enclose a cover sheet with your name, pronouns, address, telephone number, email address, the title(s) of your piece(s) and word count (prose) or line count (poetry). Please do not identify yourself on the actual piece(s) you are entering.
  • Your entry must be typed on 8 1/2″ x 11″ white paper and clipped, not stapled. Prose must be double-spaced. No faxed submissions, please. Emailed submissions accepted. See “Emailed Submission Info” in “Payment & Submission Info” section.
  • Please include page numbers and the title of your piece on every page of your submission.
  • Only winning entrants will be individually notified of results. Results will be posted on the Prairie Fire website and social media in mid-late January.
  • Each piece must be unpublished, not submitted elsewhere for publication or broadcast, nor accepted elsewhere for publication or broadcast, nor entered simultaneously in any other contest or competition for which it is also eligible to win a prize.
  • You may enter as often as you like; only your first entry in each category will be eligible for a subscription.
  • On occasion, Prairie Fire Press makes subscriber names and addresses available to external organizations. If you do not wish to receive such mailings, please state this clearly on your cover sheet.
  • Winning pieces will be published in the summer issue of Prairie Fire, with authors paid for publication.
  • International submissions accepted.

Payment & Submission Info

If paying by cheque or money order: Please send a hard copy, along with payment to:

Prairie Fire Contests
423-100 Arthur St.
Winnipeg, MB R3B 1H3

If paying by credit card or PayPal:
Please email submission to prfire@prairiefire.ca and pay via on our website (via PayPal) by clicking the orange circle below or by phoning in a credit card immediately before or after submitting your entry. (Please don’t make us have to track down payment or work from you.) 

Emailed Submission Info:

  • Please have “Contest Entry: [Category] [Name]” as your subject line. Example: Contest Entry: Poetry Joe Smith.
  • You must follow all applicable contest rules when submitting your entry via email.
  • Please state in the order notes field on the Checkout page the name of your piece and the author name (if name differs from the name on the payment).

2025 Judges

Tolu Oloruntoba

Tolu Oloruntoba

McNally Robinson Booksellers Poetry Award

Tolu Oloruntoba is the author of three collections of poetry, including Unravel (McClelland & Stewart, 2025), and a winner of the Governor General’s Literary Award for English Language Poetry and Canadian Griffin Poetry Prize. He is a member of the poetry board of icehouse poetry, a Goose Lane Editions imprint. He judged Arc Poetry‘s Tamarack Prize, was on the 2023 CBC Poetry Prize judges panel, and was a peer assessor in the English Language Poetry category of the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Awards.
Shashi Bhat

Shashi Bhat

McNally Robinson Booksellers Short Fiction Contest

Shashi Bhat is the author of the story collection Death by a Thousand Cuts (McClelland & Stewart), and the novels The Most Precious Substance on Earth (M&S, Grand Central), and The Family Took Shape (Cormorant). Her fiction received the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award for fiction, the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, the National Magazine Award for fiction, and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award, and was longlisted for the Giller Prize. Shashi’s work has appeared in such publications as Hazlitt, The Fiddlehead, The Malahat Review, Best Canadian Stories, and The Journey Prize Stories. She is the editor-in-chief of EVENT magazine and teaches creative writing at Douglas College.

Basma Kavanagh

Basma Kavanagh

McNally Robinson Booksellers Creative Non-Fiction Contest

Basma Kavanagh is a Lebanese-Canadian artist whose multidisciplinary practice includes writing, drawing, printmaking, artist’s books, textiles, and performance. She has exhibited and performed artwork across Canada and in the US. She has published three volumes of poetry, Ruba’iyat for the Time of Apricots (Frontenac House, 2018), Niche (Frontenac House, 2015) andDistillō (Gaspereau Press, 2012). Basma has been an artist in residence at the Penland School of Craft, the Banff Centre, and the Minnesota Center for Book Arts. Her work has been supported by the Canada Council for the Arts, Arts Nova Scotia, and the Manitoba Arts Council, and she recently completed an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from University of King’s College. She lives and works in Nova Scotia, within Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq.

Contest Sponsors & Supporters

MCNALLY ROBINSON BOOKSELLERS

Soon after McNally Robinson Booksellers opened its store in Winnipeg’s Osborne Village in the mid-eighties, Prairie Fire began to hold launches and readings there. McNally Robinson sold Prairie Fire on its newsstand and, occasionally, advertised in PF’s pages. Over the next several years, Holly and Paul McNally showed themselves to be great friends of local writing by establishing the Award for Manitoba Book of the Year, which was the precursor to the many awards that today comprise the Manitoba Book Awards.

The current owners, Chris Hall and Lori Baker have generously kept up the tradition. McNally Robinson Booksellers Writing Contests were launched in 2004 and have continued successfully ever since.

Moving forward from 2022 onwards, McNally Robinson Booksellers will be the official sponsor of all three of our yearly writing contests, for which we are deeply grateful.

Winnipeg International Writers Festival

Prairie Fire Press has collaborated with the Winnipeg International Writers Festival to bring the first-prize poetry winner to Winnipeg to appear at Thin Air, its annual literary festival hosted each September. This collaboration between PF and WIWF has gone on for more than twenty years, and we are grateful for their generosity and support. It greatly enhanced the overall enjoyment of winning the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award for each of those writers, and gave us the opportunity to meet them.

Back in the ’90s, when Prairie Fire had just begun to run contests, Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity supported the first-prize poetry winner with a contribution of $500 and a replica of Bliss Carman’s turquoise ring, which is how the Banff Centre Bliss Carman Poetry Award came to be. A couple of years ago, Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity decided that it was more integral to who they were to offer a one-week residency for a period of three years. That time has now come to a close and we are grateful to Banff Centre for all the years of support.

And, we’re thrilled that our collaboration with WIWF will continue and that in future, all first-prize winners may be invited to attend Thin Air, either in person or virtually. The fulfilment of that dream is always dependent on funding, but we are grateful to be continuing our partnership with WIWF and look forward to future collaborations.

Manitoba Arts Council

Prairie Fire Press acknowledges the financial assistance of the Manitoba Arts Council and the Sustainability Grant for providing the prize money for the 2021 contests.  We give our thanks to MAC and the Sustainability Grant for providing assistance during this time of financial uncertainty.