Emma Hooper

The Ottawa Independent Writers has announced this year’s shortlist for the Frank Hegyi Award for Emerging Authors, given to a Canadian author who has not already won a major literary prize. The group awards its prize to fiction and non-fiction titles in alternate years. The winner will receive $500 and a two-year Ottawa Independent Writers membership.

Judges Gerry Fostaty, Ursula Pflug, and Menaka Raman-Wilms selected the finalists from forty submitted works. The winner will be announced at a ceremony at the Prose in the Park literary festival in Ottawa on June 10.

• Joan Crate, Black Apple (Simon & Schuster)
• Susan Doherty Hannaford, A Secret Music (Cormorant Books)
• Emma Hooper, Etta and Otto and Russell and James (Penguin Canada)
• Eric Beck Rubin, School of Velocity (Doubleday Canada)
• Andy Sinclair, Breathing Lessons (Véhicule Press)