Canada Reads winner The Future by Catherine Leroux among titles longlisted for $202K Carol Shields Prize
CBC Books | Posted: March 11, 2024 5:28 PM | Last Updated: April 12
6 Canadian writers are nominated, which celebrates fiction by women and non-binary authors
Catherine Leroux is one of 15 North American authors longlisted for the second iteration of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.
The $150,000 USD ($202,082 Cdn) prize recognizes the best fiction book by a woman or non-binary writer from the U.S. and Canada. It is presently the largest international literary prize for women writers. Each of the four finalists receives $12,500 U.S. ($16,840 Cdn).
Leroux is longlisted for her Canada Reads-winning book The Future, which was translated from French by Susan Ouriou. The speculative novel was championed by author, poet and essayist Heather O'Neill.
WATCH | Heather O'Neill defends The Future on Canada Reads:
The other five Canadian titles longlisted are Cocktail by Lisa Alward, Birnam Wood by Eleanor Catton, Daughter by Claudia Dey, A History of Burning by Janika Oza and Chrysalis by Anuja Varghese.
The Future is set in an alternate history of Detroit where the French never surrendered the city to the U.S. Its residents deal with poverty, pollution and a legacy of racism. When Gloria, a woman looking for answers about her missing granddaughters, arrives in the city, she finds a kingdom of orphaned and abandoned children who have created their own society. The Future is the translation of Leroux's French-language novel L'Avenir. It also won the Jacques-Brossard Award for speculative fiction.
Leroux is a writer, translator and journalist from Montreal. She was shortlisted for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize for The Party Wall, which is an English translation of her French-language short story collection Le mur mitoyen. Leroux won the 2019 Governor General's Literary Award for English to French translation for her translation of Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien.
Ouriou is a French and Spanish to English translator, a fiction writer and a playwright. She has previously won the Governor General's Literary Award for translation for her work. She lives in Calgary.
LISTEN | Catherine Leroux discusses her novel The Future:
Catton's Birnam Wood is an engaging eco-thriller set in the middle of a landslide in New Zealand. Mira, the founder of a guerilla gardening collective that plants crops amid other criminal environmental activities, sets her sights on an evacuated farm as a way out of financial ruin. The only problem is the American billionaire Robert Lemoine has already laid claim to it as his end-of-the-world lair. After the same thing for polar opposite reasons, their paths cross and Robert makes Mira an offer that would stave off her financial concerns for good. The question is: can she trust him?
Catton is a London, Ont.-born New Zealand author. She won the 2013 Booker Prize for fiction and the 2013 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction for her second novel, The Luminaries.
LISTEN | Eleanor Catton reflects on writing a contemporary eco-thriller:
Varghese's Chrysalis is a short story collection that centres South Asian women, showing how they reclaim their power in a world that constantly undermines them. Exploring sexuality, family and cultural norms, this collection deals with desire and transformation.
Chrysalis won the 2023 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and the 2023 Writers' Trust Dayne Ogilvie Prize.
Varghese is a Hamilton, Ont.-based writer and editor. Her stories have been recognized in the Prism International Short Fiction Contest and the Alice Munro Festival Short Story Competition and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Chrysalis is her first book.
LISTEN | Anuja Varghese's short story collection sizzles with desire and transformation:
The nine American finalists are Dances by Nicole Cuffy, Coleman Hill by Kim Coleman Foote, Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan, Between Two Moons by Aisha Abdel Gawad, Loot by Tania James, You Were Watching from the Sand: Short Stories by Juliana Lamy, I Have Some Questions for You by Rebecca Makkai, A Council of Dolls by Mona Susan Power and Land of Milk and Honey by C Pam Zhang.
The 2024 jury includes writers Jen Sookfong Lee, Eden Robinson, Laila Lalami, Claire Messud and Dolen Perkins-Valdez.
The shortlist will be announced on April 9 and the winner will be revealed on May 13.
The Carol Shields Prize was founded by Susan Swan, Janice Zawerbny and Don Oravec.
Last year's winner was Fatimah Asghar for When We Were Sisters. Calgary writer Suzette Mayr was shortlisted for The Sleeping Car Porter, which won the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Planning for the prize began back in 2012 after Canadian author Susan Swan participated in a discussion of the status of women in writing on a panel that included Kate Mosse, who established the U.K. Women's Prize for Fiction and Australian writer Gail Jones. It was moderated by Shields's daughter Anne Giardini.
Looking at statistics generated by arts organizations like VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and Canadian Women in Literary Arts (CWILA), Swan found that women writers were being reviewed in publications far less than their male counterparts.
The historical numbers for major literary awards are particularly dismal — only 17 women have won the Nobel Prize in Literature since 1909 and about a third of the winners of Canada's oldest literary prize, the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, have been women.
Shields, the prize's namesake, was one of Canada's best-known writers.
Her books include the novels The Stone Diaries, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction in 1992 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993, Larry's Party and Unless. She died in 2003.