Fatimah Asghar wins the 2023 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction
Fatimah Asghar has won the first ever Carol Shields Prize for Fiction!
The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction is a major new English-language literary award to celebrate creativity and excellence in fiction by women and non-binary writers in the United States and Canada. Debut author Fatimah Asghar has been announced the winner in its inaugural year for their work, When We Were Sisters. Asghar will receive the prize of $150,000 as well as a writing residency.
The novel traces the intense bond of three orphaned siblings who, after their parents die, are left to raise one another. The youngest, Kausar, grapples with the incomprehensible loss of her parents as she also charts out her own understanding of gender; Aisha, the middle sister, spars with her ‘crybaby’ younger sibling as she desperately tries to hold on to her sense of family in an impossible situation; and Noreen, the eldest, does her best in the role of sister-mother while also trying to create a life for herself, on her own terms. As Kausar grows up, she must contend with the collision of her private and public worlds, and choose whether to remain in the life of love, sorrow and codependency she’s known or carve out a new path for herself.
Speaking of the work, the judges commented: 'Asghar's novel is a tour de force, at once stirring and beautiful, breathtaking in its lyricism, and head-turning in its experimentations.'
