Latest news with #FirstNovelAward
Hamilton Spectator
4 days ago
- Entertainment
- Hamilton Spectator
Valérie Bah wins $60K prize for best Canadian debut novel
Quebec author and filmmaker Valérie Bah is the 2025 winner of the Amazon Canada First Novel Award. Bah was awarded the $60,000 prize on Thursday evening for her novel 'Subterrane,' a speculative comedy that tells the story of the fictional metropolis of New Stockholm, where Black and queer voices are being pushed further underground by urban prosperity. 'I'm so elated to receive this award for 'Subterrane,' which touches on liberation and creativity as an indelible part of the human experience,' Bah told the Star in an email. 'This feels like a timely theme, and I hope it resonates with readers.' The novel was chosen by a panel of four judges from among a six-book shortlist, beating out English-language debuts from Andrew Boden, Benjamin Hertwig, David Huebert, Myriam Lacroix and Natalie Sue. Each shortlisted author also received a prize of $6,000. ''Subterrane expands and challenges the representation of Blackness in literature in a way that feels truly groundbreaking,' Jean Marc Ah-Sen, a Toronto-based author who was among the prize's judges, told the Star. 'When you encounter a book like that, whether it's as a reader or as a jury member, you know that it deserves the widest audience possible.' 'Subterrane' by Valérie Bah. The First Novel Award ceremony, which was co-presented by Amazon Canada and The Walrus, took place at the Globe and Mail Centre in Toronto. Earlier in the evening, 17-year-old writer Vicki Zhu was awarded a $5,000 prize for the Youth Short Story category. Zhu's short story, 'Suzanne,' beat out hundreds of entries from Canadian writers between the ages of 13 and 17. The story will be published in The Walrus later this year. The five other finalists in the Youth category, awarded for the eighth year, were Emma Chappel, Willow Greenfield, Thivya Jeyapalan, Victoria Nguyen and Abbie Pasowisty. The First Novel Award has been awarded since 1976. Among the previous winners are heavyweight authors like Michael Ondaatje , Madeleine Thien and Mona Awad . Mohawk writer Alicia Elliott won the prize last year for her novel 'And Then She Fell.' Valérie Bah, author of 'Subterrane,' and Vicky Zh, author of short story 'Suzanne,' at the 2025 Amazon Canada First Novel Award ceremony in Toronto. The First Novel Award shortlist
CBC
06-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CBC
Natalie Sue and David Huebert among finalists for $60K Amazon Canada First Novel Award
Social Sharing Authors Natalie Sue and David Huebert are among the six finalists for the 2025 Amazon Canada First Novel Award. The $60,000 award is a collaboration between Amazon Canada and The Walrus recognizing the best debut Canadian novel of the year. The remaining finalists will each receive $6,000. Sue is nominated for her novel I Hope This Finds You Well, which follows Jolene, an anxious admin for Supershops, Inc., as she navigates a workplace of unsatisfactory colleagues. Jolene copes with the frustrations of her office job through passive aggressive messages in emails that are never meant to be seen. When she is caught and reprimanded, an IT mishap results in her having access to the confidential messages of her superiors. Can Jolene use this to the advantage of her career? The 2025 CBC Poetry Prize is accepting submissions! Sue is a Calgary-based writer of Iranian and British descent. I Hope This Finds You Well is her debut novel. Huebert is shortlisted for Oil People, which is a novel set in southwestern Ontario, and weaves together two narratives and timelines to unravel family secrets and the toxic yet powerful nature of oil. The novel tells the story of 13-year-old Jade Armbruster in 1987, who is living on the family's deteriorating oil farm, as her parents decide what to do about the land and their business. Jade's teenage experiences are juxtaposed with the 1862 story of Clyde Armbruster, who built the oil farm, and the rivalry he develops with his neighbours. Huebert is a Halifax-based writer who has won the CBC Short Story Prize and The Walrus Poetry Prize. He is the author of short story collections Peninsula Sinking, which won a Dartmouth Book Award and was a runner-up for the Danuta Gleed Literary Award, and Chemical Valley, which won the Alistair MacLeod Short Fiction Prize. The other shortlisted authors are Quebec's Valérie Bah for Subterrane, B.C.'s Andrew Boden for When We Were Ashes, Alberta's Benjamin Hertwig for Juiceboxers and B.C.'s Myriam Lacroix for How It Works Out. In Bah's Subterrane, Zeynab is working on a documentary on the margins of New Stockholm, a North American city. Cipher Falls is a polluted, industrial wasteland where artists and anti-capitalists are forced to work dead-end jobs to survive. Zeynab focuses her documentary on Doudou Laguerre, an activist who mysteriously died — and the potential that his death had something to do with his dissent against a construction project. 4 Black Canadian writers to watch in 2025, according to book aficionados Ryan B. Patrick & Alicia Cox Thomson Boden's We Were Ashes follows Rainor Schacht, who revisits his past as a child in a ward for disabled children in a remote hospital called Trutzburg in Nazi Germany. Rainor sets out to find another survivor, Emmi, after discovering the kind bus driver's coded diary, and the two piece together their fragmented memories of a horrible place. In Hertwig's Juiceboxers, Plinko is a 16-year-old undergoing basic training before finishing high school. When he moves in with an older soldier, he and the other roommates, people from all different backgrounds, build an unlikely friendship. After 9/11, the military plans to go to war in Afghanistan so the young men are sent to the battlefields of Kandahar and are forever changed. Lacroix's How It Works Out explores the hypothetical questions we often ask ourselves about relationships — what if we had taken a different job, moved to another city, or never met that person? The novel pushes these "what ifs" to the extreme: what if one of you were a power-hungry CEO and the other an employee, or even a reptile and a dog? Through a series of surreal and vulnerable realities, one couple navigates countless alternate versions of their relationship. The jury is composed of writers Jean Marc Ah-Sen, Liz Harmer, Chelene Knight and Shani Mootoo. The winner will be announced at an in-person award ceremony in Toronto on June 5, 2025.
