The Last Logging Show Named the Winner of the 2025 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction
Harbour Publishing is pleased to announce that The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era, by Aaron Williams, has won the 2025 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction.
The Last Logging Show captures the spectacular setting of Haida Gwaii and the people who call it home. It unravels the lives and dreams of those who log the forests for a living, who have toiled alongside their Haida co-workers for generations—when old approaches to forestry come to an end, new ways come into being. Thoughtful and compelling, this is a story of connection, community, and the force of fundamental change.
“In Edna’s own creative non-fiction, she often wrote compassionately about communities that were marginal and poorly understood, from Nova Scotia fishing villages to Mennonite farming settlements,” said award juror Harry Froklage, former associate director of development for Laurier’s Faculty of Arts. “Aaron Williams has written a book about such a community.”
“Winning the Edna Staebler award is an incredible thrill,” said Williams. “To be in the company of such great past winners, as well as fellow nominee Martin Bauman, I'm grateful for all of it. It doesn't get any better!”
An award ceremony and reception honouring Williams will be held on April 1 2026, on Laurier’s Waterloo campus.
Aaron Williams is a British Columbia born, Nova Scotia based writer whose writing has been published in newspapers such as the Globe and Mail, the Halifax Chronicle Herald and the Vancouver Observer. He has an MFA in creative non-fiction writing from King’s College. His first book, Chasing Smoke (Harbour Publishing, Fall 2017)—based on his experience fighting forest fires in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, Quebec and Idaho—was a finalist for the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award in 2018. He lives in Halifax with his family.
The Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction is a unique award — the only one offered in Canada for the genre. Established and endowed by the late writer and award-winning journalist Edna Staebler in 1991, the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction is administered by Wilfred Laurier University and is the oldest national literary award bestowed by a university in Canada. The $10,000 prize recognizes Canadian writers for a first or second book that is written in the genre of creative non-fiction and includes a Canadian locale or significance.
For more information on the award, visit Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction | Wilfrid Laurier University