Morgan Campbell Is a Finalist For The 2025 Trillium Book Award

I’ve been sitting on this news for a couple of weeks and for the first 10 days it was an easy secret to keep, mainly because I didn’t quite believe it.

Shortly after I made the shortlist for the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, I received an email from the all-star editor Jordan Ginsberg, who worked with me to turn My Fighting Family from a scatterbrained collection of essays into a real memoir. He was writing to congratulate me, and to warn that the Trillium Book Award nomination was on the way. I had to stay quiet about it, though. Official announcement was scheduled for May 6.

If you’re not from around here, let me contextualize it for you.

It’s an enormous deal. An annual prize, awarded for an outstanding work of literature by an Ontario resident. Past winners and nominees include people we’ve heard of, and studied in school.

Austin Clarke. Margaret Atwood. Timothy Findley.

Should I continue?

Wayson Choy. Dionne Brand. Robertson Davies.

I can keep going…

An instant promotion for me and My Fighting Family. Whether or not I win, the nomination makes me elite by association, like the guy who played behind Tom Brady in high school. I set out to write a book; some very important publishing industry people see it as a work of literature. Among the five best, any genre, to hit the market in 2024.

It stunned me then and it stuns me now.

Still, never fixated on the news. A part of me was still buzzing from being named a finalist for the Rakuten Kobo award. Trying chase that info with another top tier nomination would have overwhelmed me, so I just didn’t think about it.

From there, dad life and author life teamed up to push the Trillium Award nod to the edge of the memory hole. The day-to-day grind of keeping an energetic 6-year-old fed and educated and entertained — it’s a blast, but it’s also a full-time job. And the book events populating my calendar are thrilling and fulfilling, but the planning and prep and logistics could fill another 40 hours a week.

Last week it was the Festival of Literary Diversity in Brampton — an evening session on Friday, then a panel Saturday morning. This Friday I’m back downtown, at A Different Booklist, 779 Bathurst, alongside Matt Morris, talking race, writing and more.

 

With that much stuff actually happening, I didn’t have much mental energy left to invest in award shortlists that might materialize. Besides that first message from Jordan, I hadn’t heard anything, and started to think he misread and early draft of a press release, and that no updates were coming.

Then, just before I left my house to head west for FOLD Friday, the confirmation popped up in my email inbox. Nothing left to avoid or ignore or compartmentalize. It’s real. It’s happening. Right now.

I’m still trying to make sense of it.

Every book has its own trajectory, and here’s how it has gone for My Fighting Family:

Four weeks of post-pub day buzz followed by six more weeks of decent attention. The following 12 months featured a sprinkling of events, and I’ve enjoyed every one. But mostly it’s been crickets.

Not what I expected or wanted. I didn’t think I had written a good book; I knew I had penned a damn good one. But if the market sleeps on it there’s not much you can do besides get out and hustle as if you don’t have a book deal, so that’s what I’ve been doing.

But early this spring, a gear shifted somewhere.

The Rakuten Kobo shortlist was unexpected but welcome news. I’ve already laid out the ways in which I don’t fit the profile of an Emerging Writer, it’s an award for first-time authors, and I am one of those.

To serve up another sports metaphor… Jackie Robinson was a 28-year-old veteran in 1947, when he first suited up for the Brooklyn Dodgers. Key word in that last sentence: “first.” An atypical rookie but a rookie nonetheless, so the clear choice for Rookie of The Year.

The Trillium Award shortlist takes it several steps further. That jury wasn’t just looking at new authors. They sized up every Ontarian writing in English, every genre, every level of experience, and sent me straight to the finals.

To frame it for the sports nerds — imagine finishing near the top of Rookie of The Year and MVP voting in the same year. Wilt Chamberlain won both trophies. I’m overjoyed just to be named a contender.

The main sensation I’m feeling this season?

Gratitude, for every event and award shortlist, because I remember life at the other end of the spectrum. Career on life support, scheming to keep my boss’ clammy hands off the plug. I found a way to keep writing, and I’m thankful to learn that folks who know the craft admire my work.

And I appreciate every single sale because I remember a time before I had a memoir to hustle, when people would ask when my book was coming out, and I didn’t have a good answer. So to learn that people who read think my book belongs alongside works by Canisia Lubrin and André Alexis and Michael Ondaatje, I feel honoured and vindicated.

Also humbled, inspired and motivated.

Most of all, I’m excited to see what happens next.

 

 

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