PRESS RELEASE: V. V. Ganeshananthan wins $150,000USD Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for Brotherless Night
Toronto, ON — V. V. Ganeshananthan has been named the winner of the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for her novel Brotherless Night, published by Random House. The award, which provides $150,000USD to the winner, is the largest English-language literary prize in the world for women and non-binary authors.
The announcement was made at a live event at The Globe and Mail Centre in the heart of downtown Toronto, hosted by the Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and poet Natasha Trethewey. A vibrant community of supporters, book lovers, and writers from the U.S. and Canada gathered to celebrate Ganeshananthan’s momentous win, alongside the other four finalists: Eleanor Catton (Birnam Wood), Claudia Dey (Daughter), Kim Coleman Foote (Coleman Hill), and Janika Oza (A History of Burning).
The Jury, made up of Jen Sookfong Lee (Jury Chair), Laila Lalami, Claire Messud, Dolen Perkins-Valdez, and Eden Robinson, had previously shared this about Ganeshananthan’s work: “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.”
In addition to Brotherless Night, V. V. Ganeshananthan is the author of Love Marriage, which was longlisted for the Women's Prize and named one of the best books of the year by The Washington Post. Her work has appeared in Granta, The New York Times, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading, among others. A former vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, she has also served on the board of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, and is presently a member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches in the MFA program at the University of Minnesota and co-hosts the Fiction/Non/Fiction podcast on Literary Hub, which is about the intersection of literature and the news.
The $150,000USD grand prize, along with an additional $12,500USD award per finalist, was generously donated by BMO. Ganeshananthan has also won a coveted residency at the legendary Fogo Island Inn on the coast of Newfoundland and Labrador.
“BMO is proud to support the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction again this year,” said Kimberley Goode, Chief Communications and Social Impact Officer, BMO. “This award is important because it drives progress and champions gender equity in the literary world. It also reflects BMO’s commitment to build a more inclusive society by supporting rich storytelling by diverse authors.”
“On behalf of everyone at the Carol Shields Prize Foundation, we offer V. V. Ganeshananthan our warmest congratulations on her win for her epic and unforgettable novel, Brotherless Night,” said Alexandra Skoczylas, CEO of the Carol Shields Prize Foundation.
About The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is the first major English-language literary award to celebrate creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in Canada and the United States. Named after beloved Canadian-American author Carol Shields, the Prize is managed by the Carol Shields Prize Foundation. The Foundation provides scholarships, bursaries, and other forms of financial assistance to women and non-binary writers, and offers mentoring programs, salons, and residencies for the benefit of these writers and the general public. The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction—co-founded by author Susan Swan, editor Janice Zawerbny, and arts activist Don Oravec—was founded in 2012, and presented its inaugural award in 2023.
About Carol Shields
Carol Shields was born in Oak Park, Illinois, in 1935, and moved to Canada in 1957 after her marriage. She was the author of more than twenty books, including novels, plays, poetry, essays, criticism, short fiction, and biography. Her books were nominated, and won, numerous international prizes. Most notably, her novel The Stone Diaries won the Governor General's Literary Award (Canada), the Pulitzer Prize (U.S.), and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize (UK). In 1997, her novel Larry’s Party won the Orange Prize (now called the Women's Prize for Fiction) which is given to the best book by a woman writer in the English-speaking world. She edited, along with Marjorie Anderson, two highly successful anthologies of essays by women called Dropped Threads, in which women wrote about private and personal experiences that they hadn’t shared with others before. In addition to her career as an author, Shields worked as an academic, teaching at the University of Ottawa, the University of British Columbia and the University of Manitoba. In 1996, she became chancellor of the University of Winnipeg. She raised five children with her husband, Don, and died from complications of breast cancer in Victoria, B.C., in 2003, at the age of sixty-eight.
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