American author Fatimah Asghar has won the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction for their debut novel "When We Were Sisters."
The $150,000 award celebrates excellence in fiction by women and non-binary authors in Canada and the U.S., and is bankrolled by BMO.
Asghar, whose pronouns are gender-neutral, also wrote the poetry collection "If They Come for Us" and is the writer and co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series "Brown Girls."
They also win a residency at the Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The jurors said that Asghar's book is "a tour de force, at once stirring and beautiful, breathtaking in its lyricism, and head-turning in its experimentations."
The other shortlisted authors, who will each receive $12,500, are Canadian Suzette Mayr for "The Sleeping Car Porter," and Americans Daphne Palasi Andreades for "Brown Girls," Talia Lakshmi Kolluri for "What We Fed to the Manticore" and Alexis Schaitkin for "Elsewhere."
This report by The Canadian Press was first published May 4, 2023.
The Canadian Press
