American writer V. V. Ganeshananthan wins $205K Carol Shields Prize for Fiction

American writer V. V. Ganeshananthan has won the 2024 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. 

The $150,000 U.S. ($205,074.75 Cdn) prize recognizes the best fiction book by a woman or non-binary writer from the U.S. and Canada. It is presently the largest international literary prize for women writers. The winner will also recieve a residency at the Fogo Island Inn in Newfoundland. 

Ganeshananthan is honoured for her novel Brotherless Night, which follows the story of 16-year-old Sashi in 1981 Jaffna, Sri Lanka. Sashi, an aspiring doctor, wants to do something to help her brothers and friends who are swept up in the violence of the civil war. She decides to work as a medic for the Tamil Tigers, a militant group who are fighting for self-determination for Sri Lanka's Tamil minority. But when the Tigers kill a beloved teacher and Indian peacekeepers show up and only incite more the violence, Sashi begins to question what she stands for and accepts a dangerous opportunity to document human rights violations. 

"Brotherless Night is a feminist novel set during the Sri Lankan civil war and it's especially meaningful to have it recognized by a prize that highlights work by women and non-binary writers," said Ganeshananthan in her acceptance speech.

"Brotherless Night is from the first-person point of view of a middle-aged woman, a doctor who belongs to the ethnic Tamil minority, who recalls her teenage years and young adulthood in Northern Sri Lanka during the first decade of that country's civil war. I could not have written it without the generosity and kindness of the many people I know who lived through those years, many of whom live here in Toronto."

"This recognition which comes in the week that is the 15th year anniversary of the end of the war is dedicated to them, to the people struggling to remember in the face of oppression at the hands of those who would rather that they not and of course, to civilians everywhere enduring violence."

Ganeshananthan also mentioned the influence of Carol Shields, for who the prize is named, on her own work.

"I remember reading Carol Shields as a young writer. I read her work at a formative moment and its intimacy and scope was really astonishing to me. It means so much to me to be honoured by a prize in her name."

LISTEN | A conversation with Carol Shields: 

Writers and Company53:41Pulitzer Prize winner Carol Shields brought a fresh perspective to the lives of women

On May 4, the winner of the inaugural US$150,000 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, which celebrates the work of Canadian and American women and non-binary writers, will be announced. In honour of the prize, Writers & Company is airing Eleanor Wachtel's last conversation with Shields, recorded from her home in Victoria in 2002. Shields died the following year. She was the author of more than 20 books including The Stone Diaries, The Republic of Love and Swann: A Mystery. Her last novel, Unless, tells the story of a writer struggling with the loss of her daughter, who's chosen to live on a downtown street corner with a cardboard sign fixed to her that reads "Goodness." *This episode originally aired on July 17, 2003.

Ganeshananthan is an American writer and journalist of Ilankai Tamil descent. She served as the vice president of the South Asian Journalists Association, on the board of the Asian American Writers' Workshop and is a current board member of the boards of the American Institute for Sri Lankan Studies and the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. She teaches at the the University of Minnesota and co-host a podcast called Fiction/Non/Fiction. Her first novel, Love Marriage, was longlisted for the Women's Prize. 

The  2024 jury was comprised of writers Jen Sookfong Lee, Eden Robinson, Laila Lalami, Claire Messud and Dolen Perkins-Valdez.

"An ambitious and beautifully written novel, Brotherless Night explores how ordinary people can be swept up in political violence and, despite their best efforts, eventually be swallowed by it," said the jury. "Through her sensitively crafted characters, V. V. Ganeshananthan asks us to consider how history is told, whom it serves, and the many truths it leaves out. A magnificent book."

The four remaining finalists were Canadians Eleanor Catton, Claudia Dey and Janika Oza and American writer Kim Coleman Foote. They received $12,500 U.S. ($17,089.94 Cdn).

LISTEN | 3 Canadians on the 2024 Carol Shields Prize shortlist:

6:55Three Canadians on shortlist for 150 000 dollar book prize specifically for women and nonbinary authors.

Three Canadian authors are in the running for the Carol Shields Prize for Fiction. That's a new book prize for North American authors, and it's specifically for women and nonbinary authors. It comes with prize money: $150 000 USD. That’s about $205,000 Canadian. The Carol Shields award is named on honour of the legendary Canadian-American writer Carol Shields. We heard from the co-founder of the prize, Susan Swan and spoke to Montreal based publisher Linda Leith.

Last year's winner was Fatimah Asghar for When We Were Sisters. Calgary writer Suzette Mayr was shortlisted for The Sleeping Car Porter, which won the 2022 Scotiabank Giller Prize. 

• Suzette Mayr's novel The Sleeping Car Porter uses magic realism to highlight Black Canadian history

Planning for the prize began back in 2012 after Canadian author Susan Swan participated in a discussion of the status of women in writing on a panel that included Kate Mosse, who established the U.K. Women's Prize for Fiction and Australian writer Gail Jones. It was moderated by Shields's daughter Anne Giardini.

Looking at statistics generated by arts organizations like VIDA: Women in Literary Arts and Canadian Women in Literary Arts (CWILA), Swan found that women writers were being reviewed in publications far less than their male counterparts.

The historical numbers for major literary awards are particularly dismal — only 17 women have won the Nobel Prize in Literature since 1909 and about a third of the winners of Canada's oldest literary prize, the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction, have been women.

Shields, the prize's namesake, was one of Canada's best-known writers.

Her books include the novels The Stone Diaries, which won the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction in 1992 and the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 1993, Larry's Party and Unless. She died in 2003.