The 2025 Toronto Book Awards jury is now reading through a promising crop of new Toronto-related titles. A longlist will be announced in early July with a shortlist of five finalists announced in early September. The winner will be named at a gala ceremony on October 15 in partnership with the Toronto Public Library.
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Sam Hiyate is a Toronto-based literary agent, president and CEO of The Rights Factory. In the past two decades, Sam and his team have secured hundreds of book deals that have resulted in several bestsellers. He hosts the podcast, Agent Provocateur, and he regularly appears at writers’ conferences and teaches publishing (Toronto Metropolitan University) and creative writing (University of Toronto). Before The Rights Factory, Sam ran the literary division of The Lavin Agency in 2003, building a client list and completing his first deals. Sam also worked as editor and publisher for Gutter Press, from 1993 to 2002, and worked at the literary magazines Blood & Aphorisms and The Quarterly in the 1990s.
Sophie Jai is a Trinidadian-Canadian author. Her debut novel Wild Fires (2022, HarperCollins) won or was shortlisted for several Canadian and international awards including the 2023 Toronto Book Award (finalist), the 2023 Canadian Authors Association Fred Kerner Book Award, 2023 Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, and 2019 Bridport Prize Peggy Chapman-Andrews Award. Jai has been a Writer-in-Residence, Visiting Fellow, and Scholar at the University of Oxford where she completed her masters in Creative Writing.
Wanda Nanibush is an Anishinaabe-kwe image and word warrior, curator and community organizer from Beausoleil First Nation, Canada. In 2023, Nanibush and co-author Georgiana Uhlyarik won the Toronto Book Award for Moving the Museum (Goose Lane); the work chronicles some of Nanibush’s groundbreaking work at the Art Gallery of Ontario as the inaugural Curator of Indigenous Art. She has curated survey, group, and retrospective exhibitions including: Robert Houle Red is Beautiful (NMAI, Smithsonian, Washington); Rebecca Belmore, Facing the Monumental (2019, Canada and the U.S.A.) and Toronto: Tributes + Tributaries, 1971 – 1989 (AGO). Based in Toronto, Nanibush is the founding director of aabaakwad, an international yearly gathering of over 80 Indigenous curators, writers and artists for talks and performances that last took place at Venice Biennale and was in Toronto in December 2024. She will be the Helen Frankenthaler Visiting Professor in Curating in the Ph.D. Program in Art History at City University of New York in the Graduate Department of Art History in 2025. She is also part of the curatorial team for Counterpublic 2026, St. Louis’ Triennial. In 2024, Nanibush was awarded The Hnatyshyn Foundation Mid-Career Award for Curatorial Excellence. She received her M.A. in Visual Studies from University of Toronto where she has also taught graduate courses. She is Adjunct Faculty at York University and has published widely on Indigenous art, politics, history, feminism and sexuality.
Don Oravec has worked in the cultural sector for over 25 years, first at the Toronto Symphony Orchestra, then at Tafelmusik as the Director of Development. In 2003, Don moved to the Writers’ Trust of Canada where he was Director of Fund Development and from 2005 to 2012, Executive Director. The Writers’ Trust is a national organization dedicated to improving the lives of professional Canadian writers. Don served on the board of Toronto’s Word on the Street; he is the Past-President of the Board of Directors of Project Bookmark Canada; he is a co-founder and Past Chair of the Board of Directors for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. Don is also Chair of the board of the Stonewall National Museum, Archives and Library located in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, where he lives part of the year.
David Silverberg is a poet, spoken word performer, theatre artist, journalist and writing coach. He founded and managed Toronto Poetry Slam, a biweekly poetry series at the Drake Hotel, and he was also artistic director of two Canadian Festivals of Spoken Word. His poetry has appeared in Arc, Living Hyphen, Descant, and many more publications. His non-fiction work has been published in BBC News, The Toronto Star, The Washington Post, Canadian Business and MIT Technology Review. David has brought his poetry and theatre performances to Vancouver, Montreal, Calgary, Ottawa, New York City, Paris (France), London (United Kindgdom) and London (Ontario). Find out more at davidsilverberg.ca
