Selected by editor Emily Urquhart, the 2025 edition of Best Canadian Essays showcases the best Canadian nonfiction writing published in 2023.

Featuring:

Katherine Ashenburg • James Cairns • Mitchell Consky • Michelle Cyca • Sadiqa de Meijer • Ariel Gordon • Lana Hall • Helen Humphreys • Rebecca Kempe • Jiin Kim • Christine Lai • Jessica Moore • Tom Rachman • Leanne Betasamosake Simpson • Vance Wright

EMILY URQUHART is a National Magazine Award–winning writer and has a doctorate in folklore from Memorial University of Newfoundland. Her first book, Beyond the Pale: Folklore, Family, and the Mystery of Our Hidden Genes, was a Maclean’s bestseller, a finalist for the BC National Award for Canadian Non-Fiction, and a Globe and Mail Best Book of 2015. Her freelance writing has appeared in the Toronto Star, The Walrus Magazine, Longreads, the Rumpus, and Eighteen Bridges, among other publications. She is a nonfiction editor for the New Quarterly and teaches creative nonfiction at Wilfrid Laurier University. She lives in Kitchener, Ontario, with her husband and their two children.

Emily Urquhart's profile page

Praise for the Best Canadian Series

“The wide range of writers, forms and themes represented here make it a great jumping-off point for readers who might be interested in Canadian poetry but are unsure about where to start.”
—Globe and Mail

"One of the best things about the end of the year is having a chance to look back. The three Best Canadian volumes ... are a snapshot of some of the finest in Canadian writing this year."
—Robert J. Wiersema, Toronto Star

“A superb collection of national thinkers, crackling with insight on the issues of the age.”
—Chatelaine

“The arrival, late in the fall each year, of [this] collection is always cause for fanfare.”
—Quill & Quire

“Each of the authors in Best Canadian Essays 2024 offers a particular style and perspective, but the essays work together to provide a picture of some of the issues Canadians have been facing. Many readers are likely to find something to interest them in this short collection of essays.”
—Winnipeg Free Press