It's an LPG members sweep! Four authors from four LPG publishers have been short-listed for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize.
Chef by Jaspreet Singh (Véhicule Press/Esplanade Books, 2008) has been short-listed for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book in the Caribbean and Canada region. Chef is a look at the India-Pakistan conflict from atop Siachen Glacier, the coldest and highest battlefield in the world. JASPREET SINGH's stories have appeared in Walrus, Fiddlehead, and Zoetrope. He has won critical acclaim for Seventeen Tomatoes, which was awarded the 2004 McAuslan First Book Prize and has been translated into Spanish and Punjabi. His work has appeared in AIDS Sutra: Untold Stories from India (Random House, 2008), and he recently finished writing Speak Oppenheimer, a play for Montreal's Infinite Theatre. He is currently writer-in-residence at the University of the Fraser Valley in British Columbia. Visit Véhicule Press
Cleavage by Theanna Bischoff (NeWest Press, 2008) has been short-listed for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canada region. Cleavage tracks the patchwork musings of Leah, who, at twenty-four years old and two years into a relationship, discovers she has breast cancer. THEANNA BISCHOFF was born and raised in Calgary, Alberta. Before moving to Toronto to pursue graduate studies in Psychology, she completed a BA Honours Degree in Psychology at the University of Calgary with a Concentration in Creative Writing. Her research has explored how women experience a cancer diagnosis, as well as the development of creative writing skills in adolescents. Visit NeWest Press.
The Sherpa and Other Fictions by Nila Gupta (Sumach Press, 2008) has been short-listed for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canada region. In this riveting collection of short stories, author Nila Gupta reveals intersections of contemporary Canadian and Indian cultures with raw authenticity. NILA GUPTA was the winner of the 2004 Ontario Arts Council K.M. Hunter Award for Literature. She teaches Creative Writing at community venues and social work/community work at community colleges, and is a graduate of the M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program at the University of Guelph-Humber. Poet, playwright and scholar, Gupta has also had work published in a number of literary journals and anthologies. She was born in Montreal and spent several childhood years in India before the war over Kashmir forced her family to immigrate to Canada. Visit Sumach Press.
Reading By Lightning by Joan Thomas (Goose Lane Editions, 2008) has been short-listed for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best First Book in the Caribbean and Canada region. Reading by Lightning is a Bildungsroman of great wit and depth; wry and intimate, this story of Lily Piper tells us something of how we can make sense of a future when the future is some-thing we can hardly imagine. JOAN THOMAS has been a regular book reviewer for the Globe and Mail for more than a decade. Her works have been published in numerous journals and magazines including Prairie Fire, Books in Canada, and the Winnipeg Free Press. She has won a National Magazine Award, co-edited Turn of the Story: Canadian Short Fiction on the Eve of the Millennium, and has served on the editorial boards of Turnstone Press and Prairie Fire Magazine. She lives in Winnipeg. Visit Goose Lane Editions.
The prize covers the four Commonwealth regions: Africa, the Caribbean and Canada, Europe, South Asia and South East Asia and Pacific. In each of the four regions a £1000 prize will be awarded to the Best Book. (The four Best Book winners will then compete for the overall £10,000 Commonwealth Prize.) The regional winners will be announced on March 11 in Kingston, Jamaica.
