The City of Toronto announced the finalists for the 2026 Toronto Book Awards, naming five works to this year’s shortlist.
The award, established by Toronto City Council in 1974, recognizes works that use Toronto as inspiration. All genres are judged together, with the winner receiving $20,000 and shortlisted authors receiving $2,000.
Many of the authors honored also drew on their experiences in the city to shape their stories, using real life to gently mold characters and plots.
Sri Lankan-Canadian author Sharon Bala is a first-time nominee who used her years in the city’s nonprofit sector to develop “Good Guys,” a novel that explores the relationship between philanthropy and money. Bala said everything that happens in the novel comes from things she encountered throughout her years in the city.
“It’s always just about me trying to go back there in my imagination,” Bala said. “I spent my 20s working as a publicist in nonprofits, so the world of nonprofit was legible to me and really a place I really understood.”
Bala said main character Claire’s story is also closely connected to her experiences working as a publicist.
“I understood the main character, Claire, and the way her professional mind works. I think some of the things have been some my own moral dilemmas or my own moral questioning about philanthropy, charity, nonprofit aid,” Bala said.
Bala said when beginning her latest work, she found herself revisiting the same thoughts, questions and puzzles she had while working in the philanthropy sector.
Calling on his past as well is nominee Don Gillmore, a novelist and former journalist who uses his intimate knowledge of Toronto to add traces of reality to his stories. His crime novel, “Cherry Beach,” depicts the murder of two young, college-bound women, using Toronto as a character rather than simply as a setting.
“It’s a double homicide of two young, very promising young women who are headed off to scholarships at American universities,” Gillmore said. “And I wanted to kind of use the city as a character, not just as a backdrop, but as sort of a main character.”
While constructing the fictional murders, Gillmore said he used previous crimes and incidents from his journalism career as inspiration while keeping the story unique. He recalled a case from three decades ago.
“It was almost 30 years ago, and it was the murder of two young women. These two women who were also headed to the States on scholarship,” Gillmore said.
A conversation involving the story’s main character was also drawn from Gillmore’s real life.
“The detective goes down to Kingston, has a conversation with the justice minister, and I did, in fact, have a very similar conversation with the then-justice minister about this notion of, you know, criminality,” he said.
Gillmore also used his previous research on the city’s police and policies to revisit the same issues in his latest work.
“Years ago, I wrote a piece about 51 Division, which is what the equivalent to a precinct in the States, and 51 Division used to be called the punishment station because all the bad cops in the city were sent to the same station, and you had them all in this one area,” Gillmore said. “So, in the book, I really wanted to explore some of those ideas of how policing is conducted and the different philosophies behind it.”
“Cherry Beach” investigates the murders but also delves into corruption, social inequities and Toronto’s real estate underbelly. Gillmore said he hoped to shed light on another side of the city.
“We claim to be the most multicultural city in the world, and in many ways it’s a very successful city and a kind of global model for the future in a way, but underneath that, this sort of, I think, kind of placid exterior, there are these fault lines that run, and I wanted to explore some of those fault lines through this crime,” Gillmore said.
Bala said she also hoped to bring attention to less-discussed issues in the city.
“It’s like the economic capital of the country in many ways, and characters move through whether they’re in streetcars or on bicycles,” Bala said. “Even though it’s a fictional universe, I was exploring things in the individual characters’ lives, the pressures of gentrification.”
Bala used main character Claire’s housing predicament to showcase the housing issues facing some city residents experiencing displacement.
“There’s a millennial character getting priced out of her longtime neighborhood in Scarborough, and she’s not sure what’s going to happen,” Bala said. “She’s not able to afford to live anywhere but also, characters are hobnobbing with these very rich and powerful people.”
Bala said tackling class issues was very important.
“The issues of extreme poverty existing alongside extreme wealth has always been there and if anything, that divide is just growing deeper, and that is one thing that I hope this book kind of at least gestures towards,” Bala said.
For both Bala and Gillmore, the nomination is more than just an acknowledgement, it is recognition of their memories, their experiences and validation of their literary representation of the city.
A finalist reading will take place Sept. 21, with the award ceremony following in November.
