Ali Bryan, Patrick deWitt and Deborah Willis shortlisted for $25K Leacock Medal for Canadian humour writing

Canadian writers Ali Bryan, Patrick deWitt and Deborah Willis have made the shortlist for the 2024 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

The $25,000 prize is one of the oldest of its kind, established in 1947 to support the growth of Canadian humour writing. 

Bryan is on the shortlist for her book Coq, a cross-country family drama that explores the roles each member takes up in grief after loss and later, in acceptance. Claudia is used to juggling many family problems at once, whether it’s the unruliness of her teenaged children, her brother’s broken marriage or her ex-partner’s desire to get back together.

What Claudia finds she can’t tolerate is her father remarrying ten years after her mother’s death. This change prompts the family to take a trip to Paris to reconcile their differences. However, things quickly go astray and the trip that is meant to bring them together could be what pulls them apart. 

Bryan is a writer from Nova Scotia. Her first novel, Roost, won the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction. Her second novel, The Figgs, was shortlisted for Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour in 2019. Her novel The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships was released in 2023. 

DeWitt is recognized for his novel, The Librarianist. In The Librarianist, Bob is content spending the rest of his days reading in his Oregon home. But then a chance encounter with an older woman in the supermarket brings him to the seniors’ centre, where he begins volunteering.

There, through conversations and reflection that weave back and forth in time, and a few funny characters, Bob’s life story is slowly revealed.

DeWitt is a novelist from Portland, Ore., by way of Vancouver Island. He has written several novels, including The Sisters Brothers, Undermajordomo Minor and French Exit.The film adaptation of The Sisters Brothers premiered at the 2018 Toronto International Film Festival and starred Joaquin Phoenix, John C. Reilly, Jake Gyllenhaal and Riz Ahmed. His other books include Undermajordomo Minor and French Exit.

Willis is on the long list for Girlfriend on Mars. Girlfriend on Mars is a story about love in the age of commercial space travel. Amber Kivinen is one of 23 reality TV contestants vying for two spots aboard the first commercial trip to Mars aboard MarsNow, a space shuttle commissioned by the billionaire Geoff Task. 

Girlfriend on Mars made the long list for the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize. 

Willis is a writer from Calgary. She debuted in 2009 with Vanishing and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Governor General’s Literary Award. She followed it up with a collection of short fiction entitled The Dark and Other Love Stories in 2017, which was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize and won the Georges Bugnet Award for best work of fiction published in Alberta.

The winner will be revealed on June 22.

The prize is named in honour of Ontario writer Stephen Leacock, a humorist and popular author in the first half of the 20th century. His books include Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town, published in 1912, and Literary Lapses, published in 1910.

The prize has been funded by the Dunkley Charitable Foundation since the fall of 2020. The organization is based in Orillia, Ont., the town that inspired the fictional community of Mariposa in Sunshine Sketches of a Little Town. Leacock had a summer estate there.

Last year’s winner was Wayne Johnston for Jennie’s Boy.

Other past winners include Heidi L.M Jacobs, Robertson Davies, Pierre Berton, Farley Mowat, Paul Quarrington, Mordecai Richler, Stuart McLean, Terry Fallis, Susan Juby and Cassie Stocks.

The Stephen Leacock Associates also announced the winners of the 2024 Student Humorous Short Story Competition. 

Sylvie Potje from the University of Waterloo won first place for Port and Starbucks. The runners-up are Twintuition by Iris Matthews and War, Sports and Massage Parlours by Marcus DiCerbo.

Chiara Alfinito, Ellery Bowman, Lena Brubacher, Emma Gall and Shawn Xiao received an honourable mention.

The winner receives $1,500 and each of the two runners-up receives $750.