Cree author and lawyer Michelle Good.Kent Wong/The Canadian Press
Cree author and lawyer Michelle Good continues to rack up nominations as a contender for the First Novel Award.
Amazon Canada and the Walrus announced the six debut novelists vying for the $60,000 prize Tuesday.
Good, who is from Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, is shortlisted for Five Little Indians, from HarperCollins Publishers.
The book, which follows a group of residential school survivors trying to forge new lives in Vancouver, was a Writers’ Trust runner-up and is now vying for the Governor General’s fiction prize.
Also gaining momentum on the awards circuit is Halifax’s Francesca Ekwuyasi with Butter Honey Pig Bread, from Arsenal Pulp Press.
The intergenerational tale of three Nigerian women is also a Governor General’s fiction finalist and was longlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Brampton, Ont.-based Jael Richardson, executive director of the Festival of Literary Diversity, is nominated for her dystopian tale Gutter Child, from HarperCollins Publishers.
Toronto’s Marlowe Granados also scored a nod for her summer-set romp in New York City, Happy Hour, from Flying Books.
Bergland, Ont.-raised John Elizabeth Stintzi, who won the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in 2019, is in running for “Vanishing Monuments,” from Arsenal Pulp Press, about a non-binary photographer who reconnects with their mother who has dementia.
Rounding out the short list is Sheung-King of Toronto for You are Eating an Orange. You are Naked., from Book*hug Press, about a young translator travelling the world with his unnamed lover.
The winner will be announced at a virtual ceremony on May 27.
The grand prize is worth $60,000, while each shortlisted author receives $6,000.
Established in 1976, previous winners of the First Novel Award include Michael Ondaatje, W.P. Kinsella, Nino Ricci, David Bezmozgis, Andre Alexis and Madeleine Thien.
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