Esi Edugyan | |
---|---|
Born | 1978 (age 45–46) Calgary, Alberta, Canada |
Occupation | Writer |
Alma mater | University of Victoria (BA) Johns Hopkins University (MA) |
Period | 2004–present |
Notable works | Half-Blood Blues (2011); Washington Black (2018) |
Notable awards | Scotiabank Giller Prize 2011 Half-Blood Blues Anisfield-Wolf Book Award 2012 Half-Blood Blues Scotiabank Giller Prize 2018 Washington Black |
Spouse | Steven Price |
Children | 2 |
Esi Edugyan (born 1978) is a Canadian novelist. [1] She has twice won the Giller Prize, for her novels Half-Blood Blues (2011) and Washington Black (2018).
Esi Edugyan was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta, to parents from Ghana. [1] She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria, where she was mentored by Jack Hodgins. She also earned a master's degree from Johns Hopkins Writing Seminars. [1] [2]
Her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne , written at the age of 24, [3] was published in 2004 and was shortlisted for the Hurston-Wright Legacy Award in 2005. [4]
Despite favourable reviews for her first novel, Edugyan had difficulty securing a publisher for her second fiction manuscript. [1] She spent some time as a writer-in-residence in Stuttgart, Germany. This period inspired her to drop her unsold manuscript and write another novel, Half-Blood Blues , about a young mixed-race jazz musician, Hieronymus Falk, who is part of a group in Berlin between the wars, made up of African Americans, a German Jew, and wealthy German. The Afro-German Hiero is abducted by the Nazis as a "Rhineland Bastard". Several of his fellow musicians flee Germany for Paris with the outbreak of World War II. The Americans return to the United States, but they meet again in Europe years later. [1]
Published in 2011, Half-Blood Blues was shortlisted for that year's Man Booker Prize, [5] Scotiabank Giller Prize, [6] Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, [7] and Governor General's Award for English-language fiction. [8] Edugyan was one of two Canadian writers, alongside Patrick deWitt, to make all four award lists in 2011. [6] [9]
On November 8, 2011, she won the Giller Prize for Half-Blood Blues. [10] [11] Again alongside deWitt's work, Half-Blood Blues was shortlisted for the 2012 Walter Scott Prize for historical fiction. [12] In September 2012, in a ceremony in Cleveland, Ohio, Edugyan received the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in fiction for Half-Blood Blues, chosen by a jury composed of Rita Dove, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Joyce Carol Oates, Steven Pinker, and Simon Schama. [13] [14]
In March 2014, Edugyan's first work of non-fiction, Dreaming of Elsewhere: Observations on Home, was published by the University of Alberta Press [15] in the Henry Kreisel Memorial Lecture Series. [16] [17] In 2016, she was writer-in-residence at Athabasca University in Edmonton, Alberta. [18]
Her third novel, Washington Black , was published in September 2018. [19] It won the Giller Prize in November 2018, [20] making Edugyan only the third writer, after M. G. Vassanji and Alice Munro, ever to win the award twice. [21] [22] Washington Black was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize, [23] the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, [24] the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction, [25] and the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. [26] The novel was selected for the 2022 edition of Canada Reads , where it was defended by Mark Tewksbury. [27]
She features in Margaret Busby's 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa with the contribution "The Wrong Door: Some Meditations on Solitude and Writing". [28]
In 2021, Edugyan presented six lectures as part of CBC Radio's Massey Lectures series. [29] The lectures were published in a book, Out of the Sun: On Race and Storytelling.
Edugyan was selected as chair for the 2023 Booker Prize jury, alongside fellow judges Robert Webb, Mary Jean Chan, Adjoa Andoh and James Shapiro. [30] [31]
Edugyan lives in Victoria, British Columbia, and is married to novelist and poet Steven Price, whom she met when they were both students at the University of Victoria. [1] Their first child was born in August 2011, [32] their second at the end of 2014. [33]
The Giller Prize is a literary award given to a Canadian author of a novel or short story collection published in English the previous year, after an annual juried competition between publishers who submit entries. The prize was established in 1994 by Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife Doris Giller, a former literary editor at the Toronto Star, and is awarded in November of each year along with a cash reward with the winner being presented by the previous year's winning author.
The Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour, also known as the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour or just the Leacock Medal, is an annual Canadian literary award presented for the best book of humour written in English by a Canadian writer, published or self-published in the previous year. The silver medal, designed by sculptor Emanuel Hahn, is a tribute to well-known Canadian humorist Stephen Leacock (1869–1944) and is accompanied by a cash prize of $25,000 (CAD). It is presented in the late spring or early summer each year, during a banquet ceremony in or near Leacock’s hometown of Orillia, Ontario.
The Atwood Gibson Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, formerly known as the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, is a Canadian literary award presented by the Writers' Trust of Canada after an annual juried competition of works submitted by publishers. Alongside the Governor General's Award for English-language fiction and the Giller Prize, it is considered one of the three main awards for Canadian fiction in English. Its eligibility criteria allow for it to garland collections of short stories as well as novels; works that were originally written and published in French are also eligible for the award when they appear in English translation.
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Half-Blood Blues is a fiction novel by Canadian writer Esi Edugyan, and first published in June 2011 by Serpent’s Tail. The book's dual narrative centers around Sidney "Sid" Griffiths, a journeyman jazz bassist. Griffiths' friend and bandmate, Hieronymus "Hiero" Falk, is caught on the wrong side of 1939 Nazi ideology and is essentially lost to history. Some of his music survives, however, and half a century later, fans of Falk discover his forgotten story.
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Washington Black is the third novel by Canadian author Esi Edugyan. The novel was published in 2018 by HarperCollins in Canada and by Knopf Publishers internationally. A bildungsroman, the story follows the early life of George Washington "Wash" Black, chronicling his escape from slavery and his subsequent adventures. The novel won the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize, and the 2019 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
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