British-American actress Sonya Walger is one of five authors shortlisted for the US$150,000 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction.
British-American actress Sonya Walger.Kayt Jones/via The Canadian Press
Her autofictional novel Lion, based on her relationship with her enigmatic father, is in the running for the award, which is the world’s largest English-language literary prize for women and non-binary writers.
Also on the short list is Cannon by Melbourne-born, Montreal-based graphic novelist Lee Lai, about two queer, second-generation Chinese-Canadians.
The finalists also include A Guardian and a Thief by Megha Majumdar, about a woman’s desperate attempt to get her family out of a version of India decimated by the climate crisis, and genre-bending short story collection Hellions by Julia Elliott.
Rounding out the short list is Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Quiara Alegría Hudes’s debut novel The White Hot, about a runaway mother’s 10 days of freedom.
The award will be handed out at a ceremony in Toronto on June 2.