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]
Year | Work | Award | Category | Result | Ref |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
2023 | The Island of Forgetting | Amazon.ca First Novel Award | — | Won | |
Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize | Literary Fiction | Shortlisted |
The Amazon Canada First Novel Award, formerly the Amazon.ca First Novel Award and 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.
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