PRESS RELEASE: Shortlist for $150,000 USD Carol Shields Prize for Fiction Announced
Eleanor Catton, Claudia Dey, Kim Coleman Foote, V. V. Ganeshananthan, and Janika Oza have all been shortlisted for the award.
CANADA/U.S., April 9, 2024 —The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction has announced its second annual Shortlist of five fiction writers from Canada and the United States: Eleanor Catton (Birnam Wood), Claudia Dey (Daughter), Kim Coleman Foote (Coleman Hill), V. V. Ganeshananthan (Brotherless Night), and Janika Oza (A History of Burning). One of these writers will win the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, receiving $150,000 USD and a residency with Fogo Island Inn. Each runner-up will receive $12,500 USD. All of the monetary awards are generously presented by BMO Financial Group.
This year’s Prize Jury, consisting of Jen Sookfong Lee (Jury Chair), Laila Lalami, Claire Messud, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, and Eden Robinson, shared the following of the shortlisted titles:
Birnam Wood: A Novel by Eleanor Catton (McClelland & Stewart): Shakespearean in its ambition, with a large cast of characters, Birnam Wood manages to be both a nuanced psychological novel and a cultural satire of New Zealand’s contemporary contradictions, tackling climate change, environmental activism (the book’s title–from Macbeth, of course–is the name of a ‘guerrilla gardening collective’), and the fatal inequities of late capitalism. Eleanor Catton is a superlative prose stylist: her sentences exhilarate and delight. Witty, often scathing, and painfully emotionally accurate, this brilliant novel surprises to the last.
Daughter: A Novel by Claudia Dey (Doubleday Canada): Daughter is a literary stick of dynamite–incendiary and exposing painful truths about art, family, and systemic inequities. Claudia Dey writes about the fraught relationship between a woman and her novelist father, as she tries to build her own creative career in his shadow. Both a study of intimate manipulations and the trope of the male genius, Daughter is a novel that ricochets between uncomfortable emotions and social constructs with fearlessness and intent.
Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote (SJP Lit): Coleman Hill reveals, with extraordinary depth, the journey of two families from the South to North, and their interwoven stories of pain, loss, and triumph. Pushing the narrative boundaries of fiction and family memoir, Kim Coleman Foote writes in the tradition of "biomythography," a word coined by the late American poet and essayist Audre Lorde. Yet Kim Coleman Foote also claims new literary territory for how to piece together the fragments of the past. Formally inventive and emotionally captivating, this brilliant accomplishment will take its place among the best of its generation.
Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan (Random House): An ambitious and beautifully written novel, Brotherless Night explores how ordinary people can be swept up in political violence and, despite their best efforts, eventually be swallowed by it. Through her sensitively crafted characters, V. V. Ganeshananthan asks us to consider how history is told, whom it serves, and the many truths it leaves out. A magnificent book.
A History of Burning: A Novel by Janika Oza (McClelland & Stewart): Janika Oza boldly navigates her remarkable, symphonic debut through a century of displacement of four generations of an extended Indo-Ugandan family. A History of Burning transmutes these sweeping moments of history into a nuanced and layered tale of loss, rage, and transcendence with its unflinching gaze and layered landscapes to ultimately create a heartbreaking and joyous portrait of a family that has kept each other alive with stories.
The winner of the 2024 Prize will be announced during a live event hosted by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet, writer, and Carol Shields Prize Foundation board director Natasha Trethewey in downtown Toronto on May 13. Visit carolshieldsprizeforfiction.com for more information.
The Prize aims to celebrate and amplify exceptional writing from women and non-binary authors from the United States and Canada. Co-founded by Susan Swan C.M., Janice Zawerbny, and Don Oravec, it is named after the late Carol Shields, an American-Canadian author best known for her Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, The Stone Diaries. In addition to the Prize itself, the Carol Shields Prize Foundation supports more than 10 residencies, mentorships, and scholarship opportunities for women and non-binary writers.
The awards for the The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction are generously provided by BMO Financial Group.
