Fatimah Asghar wins inaugural $206K Carol Shields Prize for debut novel ‘When We Were Sisters’

The winner of the first-ever Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is Fatimah Asghar for their debut novel “When We Were Sisters.” The announcement was made at Parnassus Books in Nashville, the bookstore owned by American writer Ann Patchett.

The prize, worth $150,000 (U.S.) — around $206,000 Canadian — is to be awarded annually to a woman or non-binary writer. Asghar also receives a residency at the award-winning Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland and Labrador and will choose a young writer to mentor during their year-long tenture as the prize holder.

Asghar is a powerful talent turning their hand to multiple artistic mediums: they are the author of the poetry collection “If They Come for Us,”; writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series “Brown Girls” that highlights friendships between women of colour; they are also the editor, along with Safia Elhillo, of “Halal If You Hear Me,” an anthology that celebrates Muslim writers who are also women, queer, gender-nonconforming, and/or trans; and the writer of the “Time and Again” episode on Disney+’s Ms. Marvel, of which they are also a co-producer.

Each of the other four finalists will receive $12,500 (U.S.), which works out to almost $17,000 Canadian. Those finalists include Canadian Suzette Mayr, who won the 2022 Giller Prize for “The Sleeping Car Porter,” which was also nominated for this prize; as well as Canadian authors Daphne Palasi Andreades for “Brown Girls,” Talia Lakshmi Kolluri for “What We Fed to the Manticore,” and Alexis Schaitkin for “Elsewhere.”

The finalists list was chosen from a long list of 15 nominations, that was itself selected from more than 250 entries by jury members Anita Rau Badami, Merilyn Simonds, Monique Truong and Crystal Wilkinson, chaired by Manitoba writer katherena vermette.

The Carol Shields prize was founded by Canadian writer Susan Swan, editor Janice Zawerbny and Don Oravec who has had 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. First announced in 2020, the prize was named for beloved author Shields, who held both Canadian and American citizenship and lived in Winnipeg.

Among those who have been championing and supporting the prize are Melinda Gates, who donated $250,000 (U.S.), as well internationally famous authors Jodi Picoult and Margaret Atwood.

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