On 2 June 2026 the winner of the 2026 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction was announced. From the five shortlisted novels vying for this prize, the winner is Julia Elliott for Hellions
Hellions is a collection of short stories which feature a nun working on a mystic manuscript, a child with a pet alligator, a girl with unexpected power, a group of children with supernatural talents and much more.
"This eerie, eclectic, genre-leaping collection takes no half-measures; every sentence of Hellions crackles or crawls. Here, human folly moves against a backdrop of horror and magic. There’s folklore in these stories, and Southern gothic horror, and surrealism, and fantasy, and, at their center, a thread of uneasy, bodily realism. The work evokes writers like Angela Carter, Dorothy Allison, Gloria Naylor, and Kelly Link. But for all its wildness, there is tremendous control; Elliott is a gifted and thrilling write"
Julia Elliot is an American author who teaches at the University of South Carolina. She is the author of another collection of short stories The Wilds (2014), and the novel The New and Improved Romie Futch (2015).
I thought that either Sonja Walger (Lion) or Megha Majumdar (A Guardian and a Thief) might win this prize, and had hoped that Lee Lai would win for Cannon, after having won the 2026 Stella Prize.
The winner receives $150,000 USD while the four shortlisted finalists receive $12,500 each.
