NEW YORK (AP) 鈥� A debut novel by the poet and screenwriter Fatimah Ashgar has won the inaugural Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, a $150,000 honor named for the late Pulitzer Prize-winning writer and given for outstanding work by a woman or non-binary person in the U.S. or Canada.
Ashgar's 鈥淲hen We Were Sisters,鈥� the story of three Muslim-American siblings, was praised Thursday by judges for weaving 鈥渘arrative threads as exacting and spare as luminous poems, their fragility a mere guise for their complete, unflinching indestructibility.鈥�
Ashgar is known for the poetry collection 鈥淚f They Come for Us鈥� and as the co-creator of the Emmy-nominated web series 鈥淏rown Girls.鈥�
Shields, who died in 2003 at age 68, was an American-born author who spent much of her life in Canada. She won the Pulitzer in 1994 for her novel 鈥淭he Stone Diaries.鈥� The Shields prize is overseen by the Carol Shields Prize Foundation, which provides grants and other forms of assistance to women and non-binary writers.
The Associated Press
