A Storied Legacy

Your favourite Canadian writer’s favourite Canadian story prize got its start thanks to a Yankee making bank off Canadian history. James A. Michener donated the royalties from the Canadian edition of Journey, his 1988 novel about the Klondike gold rush, to support emerging writers in this country. The result was the $10,000 Journey Prize, awarded annually to a short story by an early-career writer. Literary magazines were enlisted to participate by nominating the best fiction they’d published in the previous twelve months. Since the prize was first awarded in 1989, McClelland & Stewart has also published a yearly anthology of the nominees.

After thirty-five years, the list of over 350 writers whose stories have appeared in those books is a formidable literary who’s who — one that demonstrates how the title of Norman Levine’s “We All Begin in a Little Magazine,” from 1972, still holds true. Many of those writers treasure the Journey Prize, not least...