Jasmine Sealy is a writer from Barbados based in Vancouver, British Columbia, [1] whose debut novel The Island of Forgetting won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award in 2023. [2]
A graduate of the master's program in creative writing at the University of British Columbia, [3] she has published short stories in various Canadian literary magazines. [1] The Island of Forgetting, a family saga set in Barbados in which the major characters have names drawn from Greek mythology, was expanded from the short story she wrote as her master's thesis, which was the winner of the UBC/HarperCollins Best New Fiction Prize in 2020. [1]
In 2023 she was named one of the ten winners of the Journey Prize, in a special edition devoted to Black Canadian writers. [4]
The Amazon.ca First Novel Award, formerly the Books in Canada First Novel Award, is a Canadian literary award, co-presented by Amazon.ca and The Walrus to the best first novel in English published the previous year by a citizen or resident of Canada. It has been awarded since 1976.
Shani Mootoo, writer, visual artist and video maker, was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1957 to Trinidadian parents. She grew up in Trinidad and relocated at the age of 19 to Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. She currently lives in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
The Journey Prize is a Canadian literary award, presented annually by McClelland and Stewart and the Writers' Trust of Canada for the best short story published by an emerging writer in a Canadian literary magazine. The award was endowed by James A. Michener, who donated the Canadian royalty earnings from his 1988 novel Journey.
Zsuzsi Gartner is a Canadian author and journalist. She regularly writes for The Globe and Mail, the Vancouver Sun, Quill & Quire, Canadian Business, and Western Living.
Billie Livingston is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist, and poet. Born in Hamilton, Ontario, Livingston grew up in Toronto and Vancouver, British Columbia. She lives in Vancouver.
Madeleine Thien is a Canadian short story writer and novelist. The Oxford Handbook of Canadian Literature has considered her work as reflecting the increasingly trans-cultural nature of Canadian literature, exploring art, expression and politics inside Cambodia and China, as well as within diasporic East Asian communities. Thien's critically acclaimed novel, Do Not Say We Have Nothing, won the 2016 Governor General's Award for English-language fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the Edward Stanford Travel Writing Awards for Fiction. It was shortlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize, the 2017 Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, and the 2017 Rathbones Folio Prize. Her books have been translated into more than 25 languages.
Kaie Kellough is a Canadian poet and novelist. He was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, raised in Calgary, Alberta, and in 1998 moved to Montreal, Quebec, where he lives.
Ian Williams is a Canadian poet and fiction writer. His collection of short stories, Not Anyone's Anything, won the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and his debut novel, Reproduction, was awarded the 2019 Giller Prize. His work has ben shortlisted for various awards, as well.
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Nancy Jo Cullen is a Canadian poet and fiction writer, who won the 2010 Dayne Ogilvie Prize from the Writers' Trust of Canada for an emerging lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender writer. The jury, consisting of writers Brian Francis, Don Hannah and Suzette Mayr, described Cullen in the award citation as a writer "who feels like a friend", and who "tackles dark corners without false dramatics or pretensions. There is a genuine realness in her language."
Alix Hawley is a Canadian novelist and short-story writer. Her novel, All True Not a Lie In It, won the amazon.ca First Novel Award in 2015.
Yasuko Nguyen Thanh is a Canadian writer and guitarist. She has lived in Canada, Mexico, Germany, and Latin America and she was named one of ten CBC Books' writers to watch in 2013. Thanh completed a Bachelor of Arts as well as a Masters of Fine Arts from the University of Victoria. She performs with the bands Jukebox Jezebel and 12 Gauge Facial, and lives with her two children in Victoria, British Columbia.
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Diana Hartog is a Canadian poet and fiction writer. She won the Gerald Lampert Award in 1983 for her poetry collection Matinee Light, and the Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize in 1987 for Candy from Strangers.
Michelle Good is a Cree writer, poet, and lawyer from Canada, most noted for her debut novel Five Little Indians. She is a member of the Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Good has an MFA and a law degree from the University of British Columbia and, as a lawyer, advocated for residential-school survivors.
Five Little Indians is the debut novel by Cree Canadian writer Michelle Good, published in 2020 by Harper Perennial. The novel focuses on five survivors of the Canadian Indian residential school system, struggling with varying degrees of success to rebuild their lives in Vancouver, British Columbia after the end of their time in the residential schools. It also explores the love and strength that can emerge after trauma.
Pik-Shuen Fung is a Canadian writer, whose debut novel Ghost Forest was the winner of the Amazon.ca First Novel Award in 2022.
Jessica Johns is a Cree writer from Canada, whose debut novel Bad Cree was published in 2023.