ON BOOK BANNING and ON OIL finalists for the 2026 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize!
Biblioasis is thrilled to share that this morning on Wednesday, March 18, the Writers’ Trust announced their finalists for the 2026 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing, which included both On Book Banning by Ira Wells and On Oil by Don Gillmor!
About On Book Banning, the jury wrote:
“Ira Wells offers direct and incisive writing that brings suppressed voices into the light and challenges readers to question the moral authority of censorship. Refusing both academic detachment and easy provocation, Wells presents rigorous research with clarity and balance, pairing the ridiculous with the brilliant. His work is passionate and compassionate, inviting sustained reflection on freedom, responsibility, and the imperfect humanity behind all writing, and leaving readers with a deeper, more self-aware engagement with literature.”
About On Oil, the jury wrote:
“At once a memoir, a meditation, and a polemic, Don Gillmor drills deep into one of Canada’s most controversial natural resources in On Oil. Drawing on his experience as a roughneck during the 1970s Alberta oil boom, he explores the central role the petroleum industry plays in Canadian politics and business. Stories from Gillmor’s life on the rig ground his examination of the ongoing tension between oil as a driver of prosperity and values held by many other Canadians. With humour and polite insistence, Gillmor asks the questions that are at the heart of Canada’s relationship with its resource bounty.”
The two books are part of the Biblioasis Field Notes series, which explores timely issues of public interest and features writers and thinkers from a range of disciplines: philosophy, public policy, history, economics, cultural criticism, and more.
The annual $40,000 prize, now in its 26th year, recognizes literary nonfiction about a political subject that is relevant to Canadian readers. The winner of this year’s prize will be announced in Ottawa at the Politics and the Pen gala on April 29.
Grab a copy of On Book Banning here!
Grab a copy of On Oil here!
A Finalist for the 2026 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing • A Winnipeg Free Press Best Book of 2025
The freedom to read is under attack.
From the destruction of libraries in ancient Rome to today’s state-sponsored efforts to suppress LGBTQ+ literature, book bans arise from the impulse toward social control. In a survey of legal cases, literary controversies, and philosophical arguments, Ira Wells illustrates the historical opposition to the freedom to read and argues that today’s conservatives and progressives alike are warping our children’s relationship with literature and teaching them that the solution to opposing viewpoints is outright expurgation. At a moment in which our democratic institutions are buckling under the stress of polarization, On Book Banning is both rallying cry and guide to resistance for those who will always insist upon reading for themselves.
Ira Wells is a critic, essayist, and an associate professor at Victoria College in the University of Toronto, where he teaches in the Northrop Frye stream in literature and the humanities in the Vic One program. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, Globe and Mail, Guardian, The New Republic, and many other venues. His most recent book is Norman Jewison: A Director’s Life. He lives in Toronto with his wife and children.
A Finalist for the 2026 Writers’ Trust Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing
A journalist, and former roughneck, considers our long, complex, tortured relationship with oil.
Oil has dominated our lives for the last century. It has given us warmth, progress, and life-threatening pollution. It has been a gift and is now a threat. It has started wars, ended wars, and infiltrated governments—in some cases, effectively become the government. And now oil’s enduring mythology is facing a messy, complicated twilight.
In On Oil, Don Gillmor, who worked as a roughneck on oil rigs during the seventies oil boom in Alberta, looks at how the industry has changed over the decades and illustrates the ways our dependence on oil has led to regulatory capture, in Canada and elsewhere, and contributed to armed conflict and war across the world. Gillmor documents the myriad ways that oil companies have misdirected environmental action and misinformed the public about climate concerns and illuminates where we went wrong—and how we might yet change course.
Don Gillmor is the author of To the River, which won the Governor General’s Award for nonfiction. He is the author of five novels, Cherry Beach, Breaking and Entering, Long Change, Mount Pleasant, and Kanata; a two-volume history of Canada, Canada: A People’s History; and nine books for children, two of which were nominated for the Governor General’s Award. He was a senior editor at The Walrus, and his journalism has appeared in Rolling Stone, GQ, Saturday Night, Toronto Life, the Globe and Mail, and the Toronto Star. He has won twelve National Magazine Awards and numerous other honours. He lives in Toronto.
