5 Canadians nominated for first Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for women and non-binary writers, worth $150,000 (U.S.)

It’s a history-making book prize long list. The first nominees for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction have been announced, with five Canadian and 10 American writers making up the first nominees.

It is the richest such prize in the world: $150,000 (U.S.), about $206,000 (Canadian) to a single writer. The prize is binational, open to women and non-binary writers from Canada and the United States.

“There’s so much that’s shared between our countries and within our literary culture, we thought it was an opportunity to celebrate women and non-binary writers across both countries,” said Alexandra Skoczylas, the prize’s executive director, in an interview before the announcement.

Here are the five Canadians on the list, with three representing small indie publishers:

The 10 Americans writers are: Daphne Palasi Andreades for “Brown Girls” (Random House); Fatimah Asghar, “When We Were Sisters” (One World); Andrea Barrett, “Natural History: Stories” (Norton); Lisa Hsiao Chen, “Activities of Daily Living” (Norton); Kali Fajardo-Anstine, “Woman of Light” (One World); Liana Finck, “Let There Be Light” (Random House); Gish Jen, “Thank You, Mr. Nixon” (Knopf); Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, “What We Fed to the Manticore” (Tin House); Alexis Schaitkin, “Elsewhere” (Celadon Books); and Namwali Serpell, “The Furrows: A Novel” (Hogarth).

The long list was selected from more than 250 eligible entries of fiction books by North American women and non-binary writers, written and published in English in 2022, by jury members Anita Rau Badami, Merilyn Simonds, Monique Truong and Crystal Wilkinson, chaired by Manitoba writer katherena vermette.

The winner will receive $150,000 (U.S.) with the four finalists each receiving $12,500 (U.S.), about $17,000 (Canadian).

The prize is about more than just the money: it’s about nurturing both careers and a community. The winner will also receive a writer-in-residence stint at the Fogo Island Inn writers’ retreat and will choose an emerging writer to mentor during the year of their Carol Shields Prize tenure.

First announced in 2020, the prize was named for beloved author Shields, who held both Canadian and American citizenship and lived in Winnipeg. The prize was conceived by writer Susan Swan and editor Janice Zwaberny, later joined by Don Oravec, who has a long career in arts marketing and administration, after a panel discussion at the Vancouver Writers Festival about inequality between women and men writers in the two countries.

The stats are sobering. According to the prize, “(w)omen writers earn 45 per cent less than their male counterparts. And, while men make up 55 per cent of readers for the top 10 bestselling male authors, men make up only 19 per cent of readers for the top 10 bestselling women authors.”

“The goal is to address the inequality that women face in the literary world,” says Skoczylas. “That’s where the prize started at the beginning and that’s what we’re trying to do.”

This long list will be whittled down to a short list of five finalists, to be announced April 6. The winner will be announced on May 4 during a live event at celebrated writer Ann Patchett’s bookstore, Parnassus Books in Nashville, Tenn.

“We’re really hoping people will watch the livestream,” said Skoczylas, “I’m hoping … book clubs will get together and maybe watch it.

“On Wednesday, when the list is out, I’ll send it to my book club … and I’m hoping that others will do that. That’s really what we want. We want people to read these books.”

This article has been updated from a previous version to clarify that katherena vermette is a Manitoba writer.

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