Just over a decade after Susan Swan, a co-founder of the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction (along with Don Oravec and Janice Zawerbny), participated in a discussion at the Vancouver Writers’ Fest about the progress of women’s writing, the Canadian-initiated and Canadian-administered prize will soon announce the inaugural winner of the award.  

The prize, with its $150,000 (U.S.) purse, is the largest award specifically for women and nonbinary writers, and it celebrates excellence in the work of writers from Canada and the U.S. The prize is named after the late Carol Shields, the U.S.-born and Canadian-based multiple-award-winning author (Governor General’s Literary Award, Orange Prize, and Pulitzer Prize) whose works span genres.

The five writers shortlisted for the prize hail from different parts of the continent and their books differ widely in style and form, but each work contains important stories its author needed to tell.

Q&Q caught up with the shortlisted authors in advance of the May 4 announcement of the winner to talk about their books and what being shortlisted means to them. 

Daphne Palasi Andreades, Brown Girls (Random House)

What does it mean to you to be shortlisted for a prize so specifically focused on the work of women and nonbinary writers in Canada and the U.S.?

I’m so happy that this prize exists. Part of me can’t even conceive that it’s a prize that spans the U.S. and Canada, and to have made it to the top five, it’s wild. It’s beyond my wildest dreams.

Your book tells the story of a group of young women of colour with immigrant backgrounds growing up together in Queens, New York. Why was it important to you to tell those stories? 

When I think of the books that I was exposed to growing up, I didn’t really read many books that centred young women of colour who were the daughters of immigrants, none that spoke about life in Queens, none that had characters who were caught in between different cultures, different values, different places. When I decided to start this project, I was really thinking of a) the book I would have wanted to read as a young girl, and b) a quote from Toni Morrison saying if there is a book that you want to read, but it has not been written yet, then you must be the one to write it. That quote really spoke to me. It made me think, what is the book that I desperately want to read, what’s the story that I haven’t seen – maybe I should write that story. I didn’t have many expectations of publishing; I just thought it’ll become a book and my family can read it.

How does it feel to have a book that deals with characters like this noticed by a major prize?

It’s really gratifying. In many ways, I wanted to finish the book for myself. It’s just crazy to see who the book has reached. It’s really wonderful.

Fatimah Asghar, When We Were Sisters (One World)

What does it mean to you to be shortlisted for a prize so specifically focused on the work of women and nonbinary writers in Canada and the U.S.?

My book deals so much with gender, so having it be up for a prize that’s so specific around gender feels really important.

Your book tells the story of three orphaned Muslim American sisters making their way in the world after losing their parents. Why was it important for you to tell this story?

I’m South Asian, I’m nonbinary, and my parents died when I was very young. When I was growing up, I would read so many stories that were orphan narratives that followed the same route – an orphan overcame hardship and basically beat the odds by themselves and became amazing. That doesn’t reflect what things are like in my life, and it doesn’t match what it feels like to grapple with this specific grief. It was really important for me to think about what it means to re-conceive the orphan narrative in a way that feels more real, but then also what it means to situate that in a South Asian and a Muslim context. 

How does it feel, then, to have this story carry such meaning for so many different people and be recognized by a major prize?

It’s remarkable. As I was writing it, there were so many moments where I was like, “I don’t really know if this is going to resonate with anyone.” I’ve been shocked and honoured with how many people the book seems to be resonating with. 

Talia Lakshmi Kolluri, What We Fed to the Manticore (Tin House)

What does it mean to you to be shortlisted for a prize so specifically focused on the work of women and nonbinary writers in Canada and the U.S.?

I write for me, and I write because I love doing it, but it is also nice when someone says: we think your work is important too. It feels very validating. It’s a tremendous honour to be included, frankly, among the other longlisted authors. That was an unbelievable longlist. This is way more than I expected for my debut. I’m pretty stunned. 

Your debut collection features stories told from the perspectives of animals, and explores themes of environmentalism and conservation. Why was it important to you to tell those stories?

Every continent, every country is experiencing some transformative change in life because of the climate crisis. I think our creative work is, to a certain extent, about bearing witness to what the world is like, and acknowledging that the climate crisis is part of our reality. It needs to have a place in art, because 10, 20, 30 years on when people look back on the literature of today, they should see it reflected there. 

How does it feel to have a book that deals with these ideas noticed by a major prize?

It’s a little bittersweet. Sometimes I think that if the environment was in a better position I’m not sure how interested people would be. I like to think that everybody loves animals, and everybody would love to read about their experience with our environment – or at least my imagined reckoning of how they would experience our environment – but I’m not entirely certain how much attention work like this would have if we weren’t experiencing wildfires and floods and folks being displaced by climate activity.

Larry’s Party or The Stone Diaries?

Oh, Stone Diaries. I just love that book so much.

Suzette Mayr, The Sleeping Car Porter (Coach House Books)

What does it mean to you to be shortlisted for a prize so specifically focused on the work of women and nonbinary writers in Canada and the U.S.?

I’m absolutely thrilled. I’m so thrilled, because I love Carol Shields so much, and that sounds over the top but it’s absolutely true. I think she’s one of Canada’s greatest writers. One thing that’s really special about her for me is that she set a lot of her writing in Western Canada, in Winnipeg. That was just fantastic for me, having her as a model, knowing where you can set your work.

Your book tells the story of Baxter, a queer Black man who works as a sleeping car porter on cross-country passenger trains. Why was it important to you to tell this story?

I felt that the history of the Black sleeping car porters was a lost history, it was a suppressed history. In addition to that, I’ve never been able to find a history of Canada that included queer people who were also Black. I realized that I would have to write that book, and so that’s what I ended up doing. And I say that as a queer Black person who is just in search of her history – where I belong in this country and the country’s history. 

Given those very personal motivations, how does it feel to have a book about a character like Baxter noticed by multiple major prizes?

I’m absolutely shocked, honestly. While I was writing this book, I thought that it was just so niche, so esoteric, that the book wouldn’t register with anybody else. I suspected that I would maybe have an audience of 10 people, and I’d be related to half of them and the other half would be my friends. I’m so happy for the way the book is helping with that dialogue around Canadian history and the role of Black people in Canadian history, and queer people in Canadian history.

Larry’s Party or The Stone Diaries?

The Republic of Love – that’s my favourite Carol Shields book.

Alexis Schaitkin, Elsewhere (Celadon Books)

What does it mean to you to be shortlisted for a prize so specifically focused on the work of women and nonbinary writers in Canada and the U.S.?

This is very much a book I wrote during [the COVID] lockdown, and I was pregnant, and then I had an infant. I wrote it in such isolation, so it feels really cool to be now part of something that’s public and that feels like such an exciting representation of all of the different things that women and nonbinary writers are putting out into the world right now. 

Your book is a speculative fable that deals with themes of motherhood and female disappearance. Why was it important to you to tell those stories?

The thing that I’ve found really fascinating since becoming a parent, and a mother, specifically, is this tension between the public-facing and societal role and the private, intimate experience. On the one hand, the mothers in this book are constantly surveilled and judged and scrutinized, and that creates such insecurity and instability in their identities; on the other hand, there is something really intense and beautiful and mysterious in the actual work of parenting. Trying to reconcile those two things is what I really wanted the story to capture. 

How does it feel to have a book that deals with these ideas noticed by a major prize?

It was a very isolating and hard process, to get the writing done while doing the work of having little kids – and to do all of that during lockdown when we were so cut off from each other. When I wrote the book and put it out there, I felt very clear that it was powerful for me. I really didn’t know what it would be like for readers. It’s been incredibly gratifying, with the recognition from this prize, to know that it did resonate.

These interviews have been edited and condensed for clarity.