Writers
Zilla Jones, she/her, is a Black writer, lawyer, anti-racist educator, musician and mother of Afro-Caribbean, Chinese and European descent living in Winnipeg. She is a 2025 winner of the Writers Trust Rising Star award, a 2023 winner of the Journey Prize, and a 2023 finalist in the CBC short story contest and the Writers Trust/RBC Bronwen Wallace award. Her short fiction has won many awards and appears in Prairie Fire, Grain, the Malahat Review, Prism International, Freefall, SubTerrain, the Fiddlehead, Room, the ex-Puritan, EVENT and others. She was named a Writer to Watch by CBC in 2024. Zilla was a 2022 writer- in- residence with the Manitoba Arts Council/Riding Mountain National Park and is an alum of the Banff Centre for the Arts Emerging Writers program. She completed mentorships with the Manitoba Writers Guild, Diaspora Dialogues and ECW Press. Zilla’s writing has been supported by grants from the Winnipeg, Manitoba and Canada Arts Council. Her debut novel, The World So Wide, was published by Cormorant Books in April 2025. A short story collection is to follow in February 2027, and she is working on another novel. Through her writing, Zilla shares messages of joyful resistance from her ancestors.