The Sunburst Award Society has announced the winners of its annual awards recognizing the best Canadian fantasy titles. The recipients beat out renowned shortlisters such as Margaret Atwood‚ Kenneth Oppel‚ and Heather O’Neill in three categories. A jury comprising Timothy Anderson, Sylvia Bérard, Virginia O’Dine, Dale Sproule, and Myna Wallin made the selections.

In the adult category‚ a $1,000 prize‚ Toronto horror author and screenwriter Gemma Files won for Experimental Film (ChiZine Publications)‚ about a writer who goes on a hunt to unravel a double identity mystery joining a vanished 20th-century socialite and one of Canada’s first female filmmakers.

Leah Bobet‚ also hailing from Toronto‚ won the $1,000 YA award for An Inheritance of Ashes (Scholastic Canada)‚ about two sisters struggling to keep their family farm amid a dystopian‚ war-torn world after the “fall of the cities.”

And Nova Scotia writer Catherine MacLeod was named a winner for her short story “Hide and Seek” from Playground of Lost Toys (Exile Editions)‚ in which a cheating professor tries to make his wife invisible. MacLeod received a $500 purse.