Laurier names Aaron Williams winner of prestigious 2025 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction

Dec. 3, 2025
For Immediate Release

WATERLOO — Wilfrid Laurier University has named author Aaron Williams the winner of its 2025 Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction for his book The Last Logging Show: A Forestry Family at the End of an Era (Harbour Publishing). 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.

A third-generation British Columbia logger, Williams illustrates a historic yet crumbling industry set in the landscape of Haida Gwaii through prose that the jury calls “immediate and humane.” Williams holds the unique position of both insider and chronicler, painting a nuanced portrait of the practitioners of this storied vocation, and of the Indigenous people who call Haida Gwaii home.

“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. The Last Logging Show is a compelling chronicle of the lives of loggers and their families as their rugged way of life is endangered by global economics, environmental activism and the assertion of sovereignty over their own resources by Haida Gwaii’s Indigenous people. As a logger’s son who has abandoned the logger’s life, Williams presents a nuanced, often very funny, examination of a divisive topic through the voices of those who have lived their lives in the diminishing shadow of old growth forests.”

An award ceremony and reception honouring Williams will be held on April 1, 2026 on Laurier’s Waterloo campus.

“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!”

“Aaron Williams is the latest in a line of very fine Canadian authors who have succeeded in capturing the realities of life while engaging the reader through thoughtful and meaningful narrative,” said Gavin Brockett, vice-dean of Laurier’s Faculty of Arts. “I know the jury faced a difficult choice in two very strong authors, and congratulate both finalists while celebrating Aaron Williams' success.”

In addition to Froklage, the 2025 award jury included Bruce Gillespie, associate professor in Laurier’s User Experience Design program and Kathryn Wardropper, publishing professional and previous award administrator.

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 Laurier and is the oldest national literary award bestowed by a university in Canada.

Learn more about the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-Fiction.