Zora Neale Hurston was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on hoodoo. The most popular of her four novels is Their Eyes Were Watching God, published in 1937. She also wrote more than 50 short stories, plays, and essays.
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.
Malcolm Azania, is a Kenyan-Canadian novelist, teacher, writer, and journalist. He is primarily known by his pen name, Minister Faust. In addition to writing science fiction, he is a playwright, journalist, teacher, and poet. He has also written video games. He was writer in residence at the University of Alberta, 2014-2015.
Laila Lalami is a Moroccan-American novelist, essayist, and professor. After earning her Licence ès Lettres degree in Morocco, she received a fellowship to study in the United Kingdom (UK), where she earned an MA in linguistics.
Amber Valley is an unincorporated community in Alberta, Canada, about 160 kilometres (99 mi) north of the capital Edmonton. Its elevation is 608 m (1,995 ft). Originally named Pine Creek, Amber Valley was among several Alberta communities settled in the early 20th century by early black immigrants to the province from Oklahoma and the Deep South of the United States. About 1,000 African Americans emigrated to Alberta from 1909-1911. Amber Valley is the location of the Obadiah Place provincial heritage site, a homestead of one of the first African-American settler families.
The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards program honors Black writers in the United States and around the globe for literary achievement. Introduced in 2001, the Legacy Award was the first national award presented to Black writers by a national organization of Black writers.
Tayari Jones is the author of four novels, most recently An American Marriage, which was a 2018 Oprah's Book Club Selection, and won the 2019 Women's Prize for Fiction. She is a graduate of Spelman College, the University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is currently a member of the English faculty in the College of Arts and Sciences at Emory University, and recently returned to her hometown after a decade in New York City. Jones was appointed an Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-large at Cornell University.
Aminatta Forna, OBE is a Scottish and Sierra Leonean writer. She is the author of a memoir, The Devil That Danced on the Water, and four novels: Ancestor Stones (2006), The Memory of Love (2010), The Hired Man (2013) and Happiness (2018). Her novel The Memory of Love was awarded the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for "Best Book" in 2011, and was also shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction. Forna is Professor of Creative Writing at Bath Spa University and was, until recently, Sterling Brown Distinguished Visiting Professor at Williams College in Massachusetts. She is currently Lannan Visiting Chair of Poetics at Georgetown University in Washington, DC.
Kim Thúy Ly Thanh, CQ is a Vietnamese-born Canadian writer, whose debut novel Ru won the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction at the 2010 Governor General's Awards.
Charlie Johnson in the Flames is the second novel by Canadian academic Michael Ignatieff. The book follows the story of journalist Charlie Johnson who, while covering ethnic violence in the Balkans, witnesses a woman purposely set on fire by a Serbian officer. The event haunts Charlie Johnson who tracks down the officer in an attempt to discover how he could rationalize such an action. Since its publication in October 2003, it has been analysed in several literature journals. It was met with reviews that found the book to be a satisfying thriller but with uneven pacing.
Patrick deWitt is a Canadian novelist and screenwriter. He was born on Vancouver Island at Sidney, British Columbia., and later lived in California and Washington state. He lives in Portland, Oregon.
Esi Edugyan is a Canadian novelist. She has twice won the Giller Prize, for her novels Half-Blood Blues and Washington Black.
Half-Blood Blues is a fictional work written 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 does survive, however, and half a century later, fans of Falk discover his forgotten story.
The Moor's Account is a novel by Laila Lalami. It was a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction finalist in 2015.
Bernice L. McFadden is an American novelist. She has also written humorous erotica under the pseudonym Geneva Holliday.
Yvvette Edwards is a British novelist born in London, England, of Caribbean heritage. Her first novel, A Cupboard Full of Coats, was published in 2011 to much acclaim and prize nominations that included the Man Booker Prize longlist and the Commonwealth Book Prize shortlist. Edwards followed this debut work five years later with The Mother (2016), a novel that "reinforces her accomplishment". She is a contributor to the 2019 anthology New Daughters of Africa, edited by Margaret Busby.
Emma Hooper is a Canadian writer. She is most notable for her 2018 novel Our Homesick Songs, which was named as a longlisted nominee for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Born and raised in Alberta, Hooper moved to England in 2004 after completing her B.A. in music and writing at the University of Alberta. She completed an M.A. in creative writing at Bath Spa University before undertaking a Ph.D. in creative and critical writing at the University of East Anglia, which she completed in 2010. She subsequently taught at Bath Spa University. Her debut novel Etta and Otto and Russell and James was published in 2015, and was a shortlisted finalist for the amazon.ca First Novel Award. Our Homesick Songs followed in 2018.
Éric Dupont is a Canadian writer from Quebec. His 2006 novel La Logeuse was the winner of the 2008 edition of Le Combat des livres, and his 2012 novel La fiancée américaine was a competing title in the 2013 edition of the program; the latter novel's English translation, Songs for the Cold of Heart, was shortlisted for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
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 and the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize.
