This is the fifteenth edition of The Journey Prize Anthology, retitled The Journey Prize Stories. It has established itself as Canada’s most popular fiction anthology, presenting the best new Canadian writers from coast to coast. As well as receiving high praise every year, it is an important indicator of up-and-coming writers. Past winners include Yann Martel, Elyse Gasco, Cynthia Flood, Alissa York, Kevin Armstrong, and Timothy Taylor. These writers and many others whose stories have appeared in the anthology – such as André Alexis, David Bergen, Dennis Bock, Terry Griggs, Elizabeth Hay, Steven Heighton, Elise Levine, Annabel Lyon, Lisa Moore, Nancy Richler, Madeleine Thien, and M.G. Vassanji – have gone on to single themselves out with novels or collections, and have won many of Canada’s most prestigious literary awards.

This fiction anthology sets itself apart from others in that editors of literary journals across the country submit what, in their view, is the most exciting writing in English that they have published in the previous year.

The winner of the $10,000 Writers’ Trust of Canada/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize, and the journal which published the winning piece, will be announced in the spring of 2004 as part of The Writers’ Trust of Canada’s Great Literary Awards event.

Celia Barker Lottridge is a writer and storyteller who has written several highly acclaimed children's books, including Ticket to Curlew (winner of the Canadian Library Association Book of the Year for Children Award and the Geoffrey Bilson Historical Fiction Award), Berta: A Remarkable Dog (nominated for the Texas Bluebonnet Award, Horn Book starred review) and Stories form the Life of Jesus (Publisher's Weekly starred review). She wrote Home Is Beyond the Mountains after hearing her mother's stories about growing up in Persia and after reading letter's written by Celia's aunt, Susan Shedd. Born in Iowa and raised in the United States, Celia now lives in Toronto.

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“The Journey Prize Anthology has become the proving ground for new, young Canadian writers, a who’s who of the coming generation. . . . There’s nothing else like it in Canada. (I, for one, owe everything to the Journey Prize.)”
– Yann Martel, previous Journey Prize winner and the author of the Booker Prize-winning novel The Life of Pi

"The Journey Prize Anthology represents the haunting pulse of the country's literary heartbeat."
-Edmonton Journal

"An adventurous collection of cut-above stories. . . . [The Journey Prize Anthology] buttresses the widely held conviction that short fiction is alive and swelling the ranks of first-rate Canadian authors gathering accolades around the globe."
-Toronto Star

"Consistently strong, and maintains the high standard for which it has become known."
-Quill & Quire

"In this competition, the real winner is the reader."
- Books in Canada

"Even for a country used to superb short story writers like Margaret Atwood, Alice Munro, and Mavis Gallant, this is impressive stuff."
-Globe and Mail

"I have seen the future and it is fabulous."
-Ottawa Citizen

"The Journey Prize Anthology is, without a doubt, the book I most look forward to each year."
-Bert Archer, Toronto Star

"The Journey Prize Anthology offers a road map of our cultural avenues, with signs drawn up by writers as varied as the topography, economy, and customs that surround them."
-Georgia Straight

"The Journey Prize Anthology has become an important annual literary event in this country."
-Diane Schoemperlen, Kingston Whig-Standard

"A generous and timely acknowledgement of the importance of short fiction."
-Quill & Quire

"The craftsmanship of these writers is worthy of Munro or Gallant."
-Ottawa Citizen

"A tight list of who to watch among a new generation of up-and-coming writers."
-Montreal Gazette

"When you sip from this literary brew of some of the year's best short fiction produced in Canada, your senses are aroused for conjuring by your own imagination. . . . Selections that are equally distinct and equally entertaining, as good fiction should be. Readers will be rewarded."
-Denise Chong, Ottawa Citizen