> Zed Book Club / Michelle Good and Francesca Ekwuyasi up for $60,000 First Novel Award
Cree writer Michelle Good is finding it hard to celebrate her book's latest win after the remains of 215 children were found on the site of a Catholic-run residential school in Kamloops, B.C. Photo: Kent Wong
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Michelle Good and Francesca Ekwuyasi up for $60,000 First Novel Award
/ BY Kim Honey / May 5th, 2021
On the heels of nominations for the $25,000 Governor General’s Literary Award, Michelle Good’s Five Little Indians and Francesca Ekwuyasi’s Butter Honey Pig Bread are among six books vying for the $60,000 Amazon Canada First Novel award.
Good, a lawyer and author from Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, was also a runner-up for the 2020 Writer’s Trust fiction prize for her story that follows five children sent to a remote, church-run residential school and released as teenagers with no skills or support. Halifax writer, filmmaker and artist Ekwuyasi, who was born in Lagos, writes an intergenerational tale about three Nigerian women, which was long-listed for the 2020 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Joining them is Jael Richardson, the Brampton, Ont.-based executive director of the Festival of Literary Diversity, for Gutter Child, a dystopian tale about a social experiment where a disadvantaged young girl is raised in privilege.
Toronto author Marlowe Granados earned a nomination for Happy Hour, her debut novel set in New York City that captures the exuberance of youth, while Sheung-King of Toronto was nominated for a story about a translator who travels the world with his unnamed lover in You are Eating an Orange. You are Naked.
John Elizabeth Stintzi, a writer and artist born in Bergland, Ont., who lives in Kansas City, Mo., is in the running for Vanishing Monuments, a story about a non-binary photographer who returns home to Winnipeg to see their estranged mother, prompting reflections on the identities and genders they have tried on, kept or discarded.