TORONTO — Emma Donoghue is among five finalists for the $60,000 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
Donoghue, best known for her bestseller “Room,” made the list for “Learned by Heart,” which jurors praise as a “masterfully and inventively plotted” story about two girls in love.
Amanda Peters is in contention for “The Berry Pickers,” a novel about a four-year-old Mi’kmaq girl who goes missing when her family arrives in Maine to pick berries.
Also among the finalists is Michelle Porter for “A Grandmother Begins the Story,” a tale about five generations of Métis women.
Rounding out the short list are Kai Thomas, for “In the Upper Country,” about the effects of the enslavement of Black and Indigenous people in Canada; and Thomas Wharton for “The Book of Rain,” a piece of speculative fiction about the consequences of a disaster in a mining town.
The award goes to the best novel or short story collection by a Canadian author, and will be handed out Nov. 21.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Sept. 27, 2023.
