HarperCollinsPublishersLtd, the UBC School of Creative Writing and CookeMcDermid Literary Management are pleased to announce the shortlist for the 2024 HarperCollinsPublishersLtd/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction, co-sponsored by CookeMcDermid Literary Management:
- Emily Cann for her adult novel BRANCHES
- A.W. Hopkins for his short story collection A SPLENDID INDIAN
- Nilofar Shidmehr for her adult novel FORTY DAWNS OF THE PERSIAN SPRING
The winner, chosen by CookeMcDermid and the editorial team of HarperCollins, will be offered representation by CookeMcDermid and a standard contract to publish from HarperCollins, with a negotiated advance. The shortlisted authors will each have the opportunity to engage in an editorial discussion about their work with a HarperCollins editor.
Now in its twelfth year, the contest continues to attract submissions from UBC Creative Writing students and graduates. Paige Sisley is a literary agent at CookeMcDermid who has served on the HarperCollinsPublishersLtd/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction jury since its inception. She says: “Since the beginning, this prize has been a wonderful way for us to connect with new and exciting literary voices. It was a delight for us to read this year’s submissions, and we are so impressed by the manuscripts selected for the 2024 shortlist. We believe that Cann’s, Hopkins’s and Shidmehr’s works are a strong representation of the kinds of stories readers are hungry for right now: engaged with the world around us, interrogating its horrors and the challenges we face, but also filled with human connection, heart and hope.”
“We look forward to reading and considering the submissions each year this prize is held,” says Janice Zawerbny, Executive Editor at HarperCollins Canada. “It’s always exciting for us to read such a variety of voices, genres, stories and styles. Thank you to all the writers who submitted their work this year. We would also like to extend our congratulations to this year’s three finalists.”
“We’re delighted to continue our partnership with HarperCollins and CookeMcDermid, and thrilled that our wonderful students and alumni continue to have this opportunity to advance their writing careers,” says Annabel Lyon, Director of the UBC School of Creative Writing.
The winner will be announced September 27, 2024. The HarperCollinsPublishersLtd/UBC Prize for Best New Fiction is awarded bi-annually. The next opportunity will be in 2026.
JURY CITATIONS & AUTHOR BIOS FOLLOW
BRANCHES by Emily Cann
In the year 2098, North America is recovering from a devastating series of climate disasters and a war between the countries formerly known as Canada and the United States. New scientific and social developments—including the invention of hyper-carbon-fixing plants, the return of colonized lands to land stewards and Indigenous nations, and the mandating of e-vehicles—have enabled a world where climate optimism is finally possible. Still, the scars of these traumas have not faded, and many continue to live in fear of another environmental disaster.
Having lost his family and home to forest fires, Charlie moved to the utopian City with hope of a new life and possibly even a family, and now works as an Environmental Compliance Officer. He meets Pinta, a botanical artist, who still struggles with her father’s mysterious disappearance years ago. What starts out as a first date for Charlie and Pinta turns into a dangerous adventure when they encounter a new specimen of fast-growing trees that attack upon the slightest provocation. Charlie enlists help from his colleague Linda, a former war-medic, and her husband, a retired chemist. Together, the foursome begins to uncover the trees’ origins, and their possible link to Pinta’s father. Are they an experiment gone wrong, an act of eco-terrorism, or something else?
Daring, inventive, and fast paced, the novel transports us to a possible future world, where a series of surprising twists propels the story in unexpected directions, grounded by the novel’s cast of complex, fully realized characters. With its winning combination of science fiction, romance and humanity, Branches will appeal to readers of An Ocean of Minutes by Thea Lim and Camp Zero by Michelle Min Sterling.
Emily Cann lives and writes as a white settler in Halifax, NS in Mi’kma’ki. She holds an MS in Narrative Medicine from Columbia University, an MA in English from the University of Guelph, and an MFA in Creative Writing from UBC. She is currently pursuing a SSHRC- and Killam-funded PhD in English at Dalhousie. Her research focuses on recovery narratives in contemporary North American novels and memoirs. She lives with her partner, Simon. (Photographer credit: Simon Pawlowski)
A SPLENDID INDIAN by A.W. Hopkins
A SPLENDID INDIAN is a collection of ten humorous, occasionally magical, compulsively readable linked stories, spanning nearly one hundred years from the 1930s to the present day, within and around Broke Hat, a fictional reserve.
Each story in this remarkable collection works to build a growing cast of unique characters in a fully inhabited world: a boy and his best friend, a talking, poetry-reciting Rez dog, who keep an eye out for “Indian Killers” (“No One Dies in Broke Hat Creek”); a boy desperate for a girlfriend but lacking charm, and a cursed fish with all of the answers (“A Splendid Indian”); a man who routinely finds a pile of mysterious bones on his back steps (“Tuesday’s Bones”); a rooster who attempts to rally his chicken coop and the crows in a revolt against “the thick legged things” and their beheadings (“Blue Native”); a lesbian couple who pick up a rodeo cowboy on their way to an Elvis impersonation competition (“Indian Cowboy”); and many more.
Full of comical dialogue and thought-provoking set ups, the collection forms a universe of liminality, touching on themes of loneliness, death, and otherness against the backdrop of absurdity and community, perfect for readers of Monkey Beach by Eden Robinson, Bliss Montage by Ling Ma, and Mouth by Puloma Ghosh.
A.W. Hopkins is a queer & two spirited writer, director and educator. His first feature film “Indian Road Trip” won Best BC Director at the 2020 Whistler Film Festival. He has written and directed three other short films. A.W. has an MFA in Creative Writing. He has completed the Directors Lab in the Norman Jewison Film Program at the Canadian Film Center. He is a member of the Directors Guild of Canada. A.W. writes screenplays and fiction and is an adjunct professor in The School of Creative Writing at UBC. A.W. is a member of N’Quatqua First Nation. He lives in Vancouver, BC on the traditional and unceded territory of the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), Stó:lō and Səl̓ílwətaʔ/Selilwitulh (Tsleil-Waututh) and xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Nations. (Photographer credit: A.W. Hopkins)
FORTY DAWNS OF THE PERSIAN SPRING by Nilofar Shidmehr
For fans of Reading Lolita in Tehran and Marjane Satrapi, FORTY DAWNS OF THE PERSIAN SPRING centers around Raahela Ghaaderi’s forty-day journey to Iran amidst the tumultuous events of the Green Revolution, also known as the Persian Spring. The forty days represent the requisite time for healing, transformation, and spiritual growth in Islamic cultures.
It is 2009 and Raahela, an Iranian expat and former political prisoner at Tehran’s infamous Evin Prison, makes the sudden and daring decision to forego her impending wedding and fly from Canada to Iran to immerse herself in the fervor of the revolutionary movement. She believes that this risky undertaking may absolve her guilt for abandoning a teenage inmate who tragically ended her life in Evin Prison two decades earlier. To evade detection, Raahela seeks refuge first with her ex-husband, then friend and later mother, navigating both a treacherous landscape and complicated past relationships as she faces a series of turbulent political events that mirror her inner turmoil. Finally, she visits with a young revolutionary who has suffered arrest, torture, and release. In a gesture of solidarity and hope, she shares her own story of loss and resilience, offering solace and planting the seeds of a new rebellion—what will eventually become Iran’s 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
This brave, relevant and empowering novel transports readers into the heart of a totalitarian, sexist, and brutal regime and the volatile streets of Tehran, where clashes between revolutionaries and the police threaten to ignite the country. The story showcases a divided society where trust is scarce but crucial for survival, and speaks to the importance of personal relationships—of love, care and empathy—to sustain the human spirit. By fighting for freedom and democracy, Raahela tends to her own unhealed wounds. In striving for her country’s salvation, she is able to achieve her own.
An alumna of the UBC School of Creative Writing, Nilofar Shidmehr, PhD, MFA, is an Iranian-Canadian writer, poet and educator. She currently lives in Vancouver, BC and is the author of seven collections of short fiction and poetry in English and Persian. Her first collection of poetry in English, Shirin and Salt Man (Oolichan Press, 2008), was nominated for a British Columbia Book-Prize. Her latest collection of short fiction, Divided Loyalties (House of Anansi, 2019), has received many positive reviews. She has served three times as a Writer-in-Residence at Regina Public Library, City of Richmond, and McMaster University’s Department of English and Cultural Studies. Dr. Shidmehr teaches at Simon Fraser University. (Photographer credit: Petr Straka)
