Submissions for the 2025 Lane Anderson Award are now closed.
Thank you to everyone who took the time to send in their books! The short-list will be announced in the fall. Submissions for 2026 Lane Anderson Award will open March, 2026. Submission guidelines for the previous year can be found below for reference.
If you are an agent, an author, or a publisher in Canada and are interested in submitting an entry for the Lane Anderson Award, please review the submission guidelines below. The complete submission package in PDF and the online submission form can be found here:
Quick Facts
The author must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada.
The book must be published by a Canadian-owned publishing house, have an ISBN, and be available for sale in bookstores in Canada.
All entries must be published in English between January 1st, 2024 and December 31st, 2024.
The deadline for all submissions is April 30th, 2025.
Eligibility
The author must be a Canadian citizen or permanent resident of Canada.
The book must be published by a Canadian-owned publishing house, have an ISBN, and be available for sale in bookstores in Canada.
All entries must be published in English between January 1st, 2024 and December 31st, 2024.
A collection of essays by one author is eligible if the essays are on a single theme, and if the work in its entirety has not been published elsewhere. A collection of essays by more than one author is not eligible.
A work by two co-authors is acceptable, provided the whole work is integrated and coherent. In the case of winning co-authors, the prize money will be divided between them.
Non-eligible works include eBooks or books that are only available in electronic format, pamphlets, monographs, brochures, reference books, conference papers and subsequent or revised editions of books. Posthumously published works are also not eligible, nor are works of fiction.
Short-listed authors may be required to attend the awards ceremony in Toronto and, if declared the winner, to address the audience at that time.
The rules for eligibility will be administered, applied, interpreted and may be revised from time to time at the discretion of the administrator of the Lane Anderson Award. The administrator’s judgment on the application of the rules and the eligibility criteria is final.
Submission Checklist
For a submission to be considered complete the following components must be provided by the submission deadline of April 30th, 2025:
- Seven (7) copies of each book.
- The completed online submission form for each book.
- Author photo and book cover with a minimum resolution of 300 DPI sent to: laneandersonaward@gmail.com.
- The submission fee of $50.00 CDN, for each initial title submission, and a fee of $35.00 CDN for each additional title submitted. Payment can be made either by e-transfer to laneandersonaward@gmail.com or cheque made payable to the Lane Anderson Award, c/o Fitzhenry Family Foundation.
- Completed “An Understanding Between the Lane Anderson Award/Fitzhenry Family Foundation and Publishers of Books Short-listed for the Lane Anderson Award” found on the last page of submission package.
Complete submission packages should arrive by April 30th, 2025.
The Selection Process
A separate panel of three judges adjudicates each of the adult and young reader awards. Judges are selected based on their expertise in fields of science, science writing, and literature.
Each award will be determined on the relevance of its content to the importance of science in today’s world, and the author’s ability to connect the topic to the interests of the general trade reader.
The judges review all submissions and recommend their views on the shortlist directly to the award administrator, without advising the other judges of their decision. Each judge acts independently in order to ensure fairness. The award administrator reviews the submissions and advises the judges on the consensus shortlist.
Judges advise the award administrator of their ranking of the shortlisted books and the award administrator advises the judges of the winner. Consensus and commentary is invited during the process.
Short-list and Ceremony
The short-list will be announced in the fall. Short-listed authors are asked to attend the ceremony in Toronto where the winners of the 2025 Lane Anderson Award will be presented.