CBC: BEST CANADIAN FICTION OF 2025
APPLE BOOKS: BEST OF 2025
NECESSARY FICTION: recommended reading 2025


"Her stories radiate with the quiet beauty of everyday life ... None of these stories are formulaic.

"Like the narrator of Awake, an insomniac who spends her time 'thinking about people that never thought about me,' Dunic examines the lives of the exiled, constructing 'histories of disappearing moments' from fragments."

— LITERARY REVIEW OF CANADA

"All the pieces are beautifully etched thanks to Dunic's flair for the power-packed chiseled sentence. [...] These stories give literary realism a good name."

— KIRKUS REVIEWS

"Dunic's stories are neatly constructed, subtle but capable of delivering an out-of-nowhere emotional punch that has the ring of truth."

— APPLE BOOKS REVIEW

"These quiet stories are so perfectly immersive, so sensitively paced, and so gorgeous in their detail that they banished the desperate noise of the daily news cycle and reminded me that other ways of being are possible."

— NECESSARY FICTION REVIEW

"The stories and characters in Dunic’s collection offer great psychological depth and detail. These are stories of loneliness, isolation and despair, with characters who struggle to connect, to find meaning and to move forward."

— WINNIPEG FREE PRESS

***

AVAILABLE HERE:


LOCAL BOOKSTORES
INVISIBLE PUBLISHING
INDIGO AND AMAZON

Stories included in this collection:

Toronto Star Short Story Contest: WINNER (Cardinal)

Toronto Star Short Story Contest: WINNER (Youth)

CBC Short Story Prize: LONGLIST (Bodies)

CBC Short Story Prize: LONGLIST (Youth)

CBC Short Story Prize: LONGLIST (The Artist)

Journey Prize: NOMINATED (The Apartment)

Humber Literary Review Emerging Writers Fiction Contest: 3RD PLACE (Bodies)

Room Magazine's Fiction Contest: LONGLIST(The Artist)


TORONTO STAR

CONTEST JUDGES

"clean writing unfolds the perfectly paced narrative in a powerfully quiet way;
there's not a word out of place"

GRAIN MAGAZINE

FICTION EDITOR

"the images and prose are stunning”

THE TEMZ REVIEW

FOUNDER

"precisely the reason I loved the story, because it doesn't flinch"

MASIONNEUVE MAGAZINE

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

"languorous and existential"

THE OPIATE MAGAZINE

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

"timeless human feeling"

bio

Born in Belgrade and brought to Toronto as an infant. Grew up in Scarborough and Pickering, attended the University of Toronto, graduated from Centennial College for journalism.

After winning the Toronto Star Short Story Contest, I received a free mentorship program from the Humber School for Writers — I am grateful for that opportunity.

My debut novel, The Clarion, was released in 2023. It won the Trillium Book Award, was longlisted for the Giller Prize, and made "Best of 2025" lists from The Globe and Mail, Apple Books and the CBC. Apple Books named it the "Best Canadian Debut" of the year. The CBC called me a "Writer to Watch."

Now living in Scarborough again.

INSTAGRAM
***WINNER OF THE 2024 TRILLIUM BOOK AWARD***
2023 GILLER PRIZE LONGLIST
GLOBE AND MAIL'S BEST BOOKS OF 2023
APPLE BOOKS: BEST CANADIAN DEBUT of 2023
CBC'S BEST CANADIAN FICTION OF 2023
CBC'S WRITERS TO WATCH 2023


"ENTRANCING DEBUT"

— The Globe and Mail

"funny, sad, quietly profound"

— Trillium Book Award

"impressive indeed"

— Toronto Star Review

"With this luminous work, Dunic reminds us that life is not an audition.
Rather, it is unfolding moment by moment in the mystical everyday"

— Trillium Book Award Judges

"a novel of small, graceful moments of epiphany"

— Toronto Star Review

excerpt from

youth


There was something pure about them, like elements. Life was long with so much sameness and repetition, life had a way of tempering you out, smoothing and polishing you down. Teenagers were pure like animals, elemental, hot and bright or dark and cold, sparking off each other, reactive and explosive. But sloppy and blind and foolish, with bravado so charming and pathetic; they were mere children who had grown too big, still smashing into things.

She remembered earlier years when she did not like teenagers, saw something cynical in that bravado. But her only child had died before birth and it had left her so fatally humbled and longing. She saw so much wounded innocence and longing in them. And pride and vanity and struggling to pull themselves out of the bewildering madness of youth — the struggle to become someone, even only just themselves.

photos by DTD  ©  copyright nina dunic