News

2024 Novella Prize Winner:
Ryan Cannon

Ryan Cannon Congratulations to Ryan Cannon, whose "A Hunting Story" has won the 2024 Novella Prize!

Ryan Cannon’s entry was chosen from 146 submissions. He's been awarded $2,000 in prize money, and his novella will be published in the summer 2024 issue #227.

Here's what judges Jenny Ferguson and Jack Wang had to say:
“A Hunting Story” is an astonishing novella in which three brothers, all fathers to daughters, take their guns to the wilds of the Idaho panhandle. When a game camera catches a glimpse of a girl—maybe real, maybe not—the men go in pursuit of her and ultimately their own ghosts. With deft strokes and expertly shifting points of view, Ryan Cannon  brings each brother to vivid life and excavates his deepest sorrows. In taut, electrifying prose, replete with visions of the natural world and our modern hauntings, he gives us scene after emotionally arresting scene, and through them, a moving sense of the sometimes desperate and irrational ways we deal with grief and loss.

Ryan Cannon is a storyteller working in film and fiction. He received an MFA in writing from the University of Texas at Austin, where he was a James A. Michener Fellow. A working screenwriter, Ryan’s screenplays have been optioned and developed by major production companies in Los Angeles and New York. His stories have appeared most recently in Alaska Quarterly Review, Willow Springs, and Narrative Magazine. He lives in Idaho and teaches film at Boise State University.

Look for an interview with Ryan in our July Malahat lite e-newsletter.

We would also like to congratulate the 2024 Novella Prize finalists:
Catherine Bush, "Derecho"
Joe Enns, "Eyes Before They Dry"
Lesley Finn, "Ardent Imagination"
Zilla Jones, "Robbed Time (or, The Woman Who Refused to Die)"
John Elizabeth Stintzi, "Foundations"
Katie Zdybel, "Fallowing"

Thank you to judges Jenny Ferguson and Jack Wang for their work. And thank you to our volunteers and to all who entered the contest!

The Malahat Review’s Novella Prize runs every other year, alternating with the Long Poem Prize. The deadline for the next Novella Prize will be February 1, 2026.