Alberta Book Publishing: 2025 Year in Review
Can you believe it is December already? This year has flown by in a flurry of productivity and industry accomplishments! Every year we ask ourselves: how do book publishers do it? The only plausible answer is secret super powers.
In 2025, in addition to publishing lots of new and exciting titles, Alberta book publishers aided our province’s educators and classrooms with curriculum resources, shared Alberta’s Story internationally at the Frankfurt Book Fair, and have been recognized across the country with book awards.
As 2025 becomes a memory and we set our calendars to 2026, let’s take a look back at all the amazing moments from publishers this year. See some of the highlights from 2025 below!
FREEHAND BOOKS
It was an amazing year of awards for Freehand Books’ Juiceboxers by Benjamin Hertwig. The debut novel was awarded the 2025 Robert Kroetsch City of Edmonton Book Prize, and was shortlisted for both the Governor General’s Literary Award for Fiction and the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. We love to see local authors and publishers winning!
In more wonderful news, Freehand’s Colours in Her Hands by Alice Zorn was the official selection of this year’s One Book, One Community program at the Alice B. Donahue Library and Archives in Athabasca. The novel is about a woman with Down Syndrome who makes stunning works of embroidery, and the wonderful folks at the Athabasca library organized several community activities surrounding the book, including an embroidery workshop, arts showcase, and author discussion. NeWest Press had an action packed 2025! In other exciting industry news, NeWest Press’ Call of the Void won the Best Original Paperback P.I. at the 2025 Shamus Awards. This is the second in the Sloane Donovan Mystery series, with the third instalment forthcoming! Athabasca University Press’s standout publication for this past year was Resisting the Dehumanization of Refugees edited by Yasmeen Abu-Laban, Michael Frishkopf, Reza Hasmath, and Anna Kirova. Published in 2024, this book stole the spotlight in 2025 by winning the Canadian Studies Network Best Edited Collection Prize. It was also shortlisted for Book Cover Design of the Year at the 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards. Library lovers were obsessed with Brush Education this year. Every month in 2025, Brush Education was featured on the Top Ten Most Borrowed list. What can we say, Albertans have great taste! Library users weren’t the only ones impressed with Brush Education. The 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards was also in awe, awarding Brush Education Learning Book of the Year for their title Common Clinical Presentations. It’s been an exciting twelve months for Laberinto Press. They launched their fourth anthology, Beyond Touch Sites, curated by Prairie Grindstone Prize Winner Wendy McGrath. In a burst of creative genius, they offered a Laberinto Showcase at LitFest, bringing their catalogue to life with dance and musical performances in multimodal translations of their anthologies. In other exciting news, translation scholars from King’s College, London have invited Laberinto Press to become a member of the Experiential Translation Network. We can’t wait to see what this partnership brings! Frontenac House has been having a hot streak lately! Since this October, their title In the Bear’s House by Bruce Hunter has been gracing the Alberta Bestsellers list. Getting on the list once is a marker of success. However, getting on the list multiple times in a row is a sign of a much-loved book. Frontenac House also received award buzz this year. The stunning Buffalo Traces by Mark Vitaris was shortlistedfor Book Illustration of the Year at the 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards . Standing out against hundreds of other works, University of Alberta Press’ Northerny won the prestigious 2025 Canadian First Book Prize. The $10,000 prize also came with a six-week residency in Italy. Buon viaggio! University of Alberta Press also won big at the 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards, with Tyler McCreary’s Indigenous Legalities, Pipeline Viscosities winning Scholarly and Academic Book of the Year. Durvile & UpRoute continues to take the book world by storm. In 2025, they received stellar reviews for their Alberta-based non-fiction Rough & Messy Justice: A Train Heist, Murder, and Misdeeds, including praise from Alberta Views and The British Columbia Review. Durvile & UpRoute also published Canada Unscripted: Conversations with Canadian Media Icons. This title showcases 21 of the most influential voices in Canadian film and broadcasting. In these intimate and often surprising interviews, celebrated actors, journalists, directors, and producers share stories that are raw, funny, and deeply revealing. The interviews were conducted by Vic Sarin, one of Canada’s most acclaimed filmmakers, whose career has spanned continents, genres, and generations. With warmth and insight, Vic draws out the essence of each storyteller. 2025 contained big wins for the University of Calgary Press. Invisible Lives by Cristalle Smith was responsible for one of those wins, receiving the 2025 Stephan G. Stephansson Award for Poetry. The second big win went to Doing Democracy Differently by Roberta Rice. The non-fiction book received the Canadian Association for Latin American and Caribbean Studies Book Prize. For the second year in a row, Renegade swept the 2025 Alberta Book Publishing Awards, achieving three huge wins with their title Shout Kill Revel. The juries were blown away by the graphic novel’s illustrations, storytelling, and genre-bending plot. The stunning Wheetago War Roth also gained attention this year. It was shortlisted for the Aurora Best Comic/Graphic Novel Award at the Sci-fi Fantasy Awards. Mythic Roads Press shot for the moon…and won! Their title Moondust in My Hair Net was the 2025 gold winner of the Bill Fisher Award for Best First Book: Fiction. What an amazing achievement for a new press! They also launched their second book, The Moon the Sun Forgot, an immersive tale of love and retribution, set in the mysterious and gorgeously imagined depths of Europa’s subsurface ocean. A major 2025 highlight has been the launch of BWL’s new Paranormal Canadiana Collection. Every book features a different province, pairing real Canadian settings with the fantastical. Six books in this collection have been released in 2025, with the rest set to be published in 2026. We can’t wait to adventure into familiar places and experience unusual chills. See one of the Paranormal Canadiana Collection books below. Playtime: The Paranormal Canadiana Collection
Juiceboxers
Benjamin Hertwig
Published: Sep 17, 2024 by Freehand Books
ISBN: 9781990601712
Colours in Her Hands
Alice Zorn
Published: Sep 03, 2024 by Freehand Books
ISBN: 9781990601774
NEWEST PRESS
One of their top highlights was welcoming their new General Manager, Fawnda Mithrush. Fawnda brings over fifteen years of experience in Edmonton’s media, arts, and nonprofit sectors. In addition to her role as executive director of LitFest, she has served as general manager for Theatre Network and the Freewill Shakespeare Festival, and has overseen development projects for the Edmonton Fringe Festival, Explore Edmonton, and the Alberta Podcast Network. Achievements include accolades from the International Association of Business Communicators, Edify’s Top 40 Under 40, the Canadian Online Publishing Awards in podcasting, and inclusion in Business / Arts Association’s 2024 Emerging Leaders cohort.
Call of the Void: A Sloane Donovan Mystery
J.T. Siemens
Published: Mar 01, 2024 by NeWest Press
ISBN: 9781774390863
ATHABASCA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Resisting the Dehumanization of Refugees
Published: May 28, 2024 by Athabasca University Press
ISBN: 9781771994101
BRUSH EDUCATION
Common Clinical Presentations
Christopher Naugler
Published: Jun 05, 2024 by Brush Education
ISBN: 9781550599428
LABERINTO PRESS
Beyond Touch Sites: An Anthology of the Tangible
Published: May 01, 2025 by Laberinto Press
ISBN: 9781777085964
FRONTENAC HOUSE
In the Bear’s HouseBruce Hunter
Published: May 25, 2025 by Frontenac House
ISBN: 9781989466988
Buffalo TracesMark Vitaris
Published: 2024 by Frontenac House
ISBN: 9781989466766
UNIVERSITY OF ALBERTA PRESS
Northerny
Dawn Macdonald
Published: Feb 02, 2024 by University of Alberta Press
ISBN: 9781772127379
Indigenous Legalities, Pipeline Viscosities: Colonial Extractivism and Wet’suwet’en Resistance
Tyler McCreary
Published: Feb 29, 2024 by University of Alberta Press
ISBN: 9781772127041
DURVILE & UPROUTE
Rough & Messy Justice: A Train Heist, Murder & Misdeeds
W. Keith Regular
Published: May 01, 2025 by Durvile Publications Ltd.
ISBN: 9781990735660
Canada Unscripted: Conversations with Canadian Media Icons
Vic Sarin
, William Shatner , Alanis Obomsiwin Published: Sep 01, 2025 by Durvile & UpRoute
ISBN: 9781990735950
UNIVERSITY OF CALGARY PRESS
Invisible Lives
Cristalle Smith
Published: Jul 15, 2024 by University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 9781773855134
Doing Democracy Differently: Indigenous Rights and Representation in Canada and Latin America
Roberta Rice
Published: Aug 15, 2024 by University of Calgary Press
ISBN: 9781773855639
RENEGADE ARTS ENTERTAINMENT
Shout Kill Revel
Jarret Hartnell
Published: Apr 17, 2024 by Renegade Arts Entertainment
ISBN: 9781988903910
Roth
Richard Van Camp
Published: Oct 18, 2024 by Renegade Arts Entertainment
ISBN: 9781989754221
MYTHIC ROADS PRESS
Moon Dust in My Hairnet
JR Creaden
Published: Apr 19, 2024 by Mythic Roads Press
ISBN: 9781738125401
The Moon the Sun Forgot
B.J. Wagner
Published: Mar 04, 2025 by Mythic Roads Press
ISBN: 9781738125449
BWL PUBLISHING INC
Eden Monroe
Published: Sep 01, 2025 by BWL Publishing Inc.
ISBN: 9780228637080