Sharon Bala (born April 3, 1979) is a Canadian writer residing in St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador.[1]
Sharon Bala | |
|---|---|
.jpg) Bala at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival in 2018 | |
| Born | Dubai, UAE |
| Occupation | Writer |
| Language | English |
| Nationality | Canadian |
| Alma mater | |
| Notable awards | Journey Prize (2017) |
| Website | |
| www | |
Her debut novel, The Boat People, won the 2015 Percy Janes First Novel Award for unpublished manuscripts.[2] It was later published by McClelland and Stewart and Doubleday in January 2018.[3] The book was internationally publicized as part of Penguin Random House's One World, One Book campaign.[4]
The book was selected for the 2018 edition of Canada Reads, where it was defended by Mozhdah Jamalzadah.[5] It won the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction, was a finalist for the 2018 amazon.ca First Novel Award,[6] and was shortlisted for the 2015 Fresh Fish Award for Emerging Writers[7] and the 2019 Thomas Head Raddall Award.[8]
Bala was the winner of the 2017 Journey Prize for her short story "Butter Tea at Starbucks",[9] and was longlisted for the 2017 National Magazine Award for fiction for her short story "Miloslav".[10] Her short fiction has appeared in Hazlitt, Grain, The Dalhousie Review, Riddle Fence, Room, Prism International, Maisonneuve, Joyland, The New Quarterly, and in an anthology called Racket: New Writing From Newfoundland.[11]
Awards
- 2015 Percy Janes First Novel Award for The Boat People
- 2017 Journey Prize for "Butter Tea at Starbucks," published in The New Quarterly[9]
Bibliography
- The Boat People (2018)