8
WINNER
Mother Tongue Publishing of Salt Spring Island B.C.,
is pleased to announce the
WINNER of our Search for the Great BC Novel Contest!
Jack Hodgins, the final judge has chosen Everything Was Goodbye, a novel by Gurjinder Basran to be published by Mother Tongue Publishing, fall 2010.
"Gurjinder Basran’s ambitious novel Everything was Good-bye is the fascinating story of a strong-willed young Indo-Canadian woman raised in the Lower Mainland, and traces her life from adolescence to middle-age -- a life of rebellion against the expectations of a tradition-bound widowed mother and the demands of her community. Meena’s story brings us intimately into her world, and allows us to identify with the difficulties of trying to live in the culture of a new world while dealing with expectations and demands originating in another. Although she is to a certain extent representative, Meena is also a unique rebel, imaginative and passionate, torn between a weakening attachment to her family and her desire to be part of the larger Canadian culture she has been raised within. There is heartbreak here, and violence, but there is romance and bravery as well, and some triumph. Above all, there is the reward of getting to know this bravely determined young woman. "
- Jack Hodgins.
Gurjinder Basran studied creative writing at Simon Fraser University and The Banff Center for the Arts. Her work was shortlisted for Amazon.com’s 2008 search for the Next Breakthrough Novel and earned her a place in the Vancouver Sun’s annual speculative arts and culture article, “Ones To Watch.” A 2006 graduate of Simon Fraser University's award-winning Writer's Studio, Gurjinder has read her work at the Vancouver International Writers Festival and has been both a panelist and facilitator on writing at the 2007 Writer's Studio alumni symposium. Gurjinder lives in Delta, British Columbia with her husband and two sons. This is her first novel.
The short list judges, Vancouver novelist, Karen X Tulchinsky, and Salt Spring novelist Kathy Page, read sixty-four submissions and short-listed manuscripts by Gurjinder Basran, Gillean Chase , DC Reid, Kuya Minogue and Gillian Wigmore.
The writer of the winning ms will receive:
- A publishing contract with Mother Tongue Publishing.
- $1,000 advance.
- A regional book tour.
- Publication of the winning novel in a beautiful trade paper edition.
KAREN X TULCHINSKY: Her novel The Five Books of Moses Lapinsky was a finalist for the Toronto Book Award and winner of the 'One Book One Vancouver' Award in 2008. Her first book, In Her Nature won the 1995 VanCity Book Prize.
KATHY PAGE. Her novel Alphabet was short-listed for the Governor General's Award in 2005 and The Story of My Face was long-listed for the Orange Prize in 2002.
JACK HODGINS, winner of BC's Lieutenant Governor's Award for Literary Excellence, the Terasen Lifetime Achievement Award, the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize, the Governor General's Award and the Canadian-Australia Prize.
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