litfarm

I just found out tonight that Gurjinder Basran’s novel Everything Was Goodbye has won Mother Tongue Publishing’s Search for the Great BC Novel Contest!

Gurjinder, who was named “one to watch” in 2008 by the Vancouver Sun, also had her novel short-listed for the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award in the same year.

From contest judge Jack Hodgins:

“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.”

Other judges were Karen X. Tulchinsky and Kathy Page.

I’m really, really, really happy for Gurjinder. I love it when the good guys win.

I’ll be reading from a work-in-progress at the next TWS Reading Series, Thursday, Dec 10th, 7-9:30pm.

The reading is at Rhizome, 317 East Broadway, Vancouver, BC (map).

Also reading is Gurjinder Basran, fellow TWS alum, and the event is hosted by the always gracious and charming Eufemia Fantetti.

Here’s the listing in The Straight, for more details.

Last year Amazon and the Penguin Group (USA) unveiled an interesting new contest, the Breakthrough Novel Award. They accepted 10,000 manuscripts, largely from unpublished authors, and over a period of several months whittled down this list to a group of 2,000. Amazon Vine users were encouraged to vote on excerpts from this batch, narrowing it down to a group of 500 novels.

The 500 were evaluated by Publishers Weekly editors, and Penguin’s editors used those evaluations to pick a group of 100 semi-finalists, which were voted on by the hoi polloi to choose three finalists. A panel of guest editors picked the winner, the mystery novel Fresh Kills, by Bill Loehfelm. Last year TWS alumna Gurjinder Basran made it to the semi-finals.

Amazon just announced that they’re doing it again. The prize is a publishing contract with Penguin and a $25,000 advance. The submission deadline in February 2009. Here’s what you need to enter:

Entrants must provide a full Manuscript (Between 50,000 and 150,000 words), an Excerpt from the beginning of your novel (Between 3,000 and 5,000 words), a novel Pitch of up to 300 words and accompanying contest and biographic information such as title, genre, book description, and contact information. (as well as an optional author photo).

So polish that novel that’s been wedged between Fallout 3 and that folder of Facebook messages to your ex- that you write but never send because she won’t accept your friend requests.

And then check out how to enter for more information. Be warned that submissions are rolling and they only accept the first 10,000, so the earlier the better.

Way back at the end of 2007, the Vancouver Sun published some predictions on talented unknowns set to blow up in Aught Eight. (Notice how I imply that Aught Eight is some kind of trendy new way of referring to 2008, therefore firming up my hipster-cred. It could be, for all I know.) Anyway, on the list of people we need to keep an eye on, is my fellow alumna (TWS ‘06) Gurjinder Basran:

A regional manager with Bell Mobility and a mother of two, north Delta’s Gurjinder Basran squeezed a creative writing program at Simon Fraser University into her life. There she wrote a novel about a young Indo-Canadian woman trying to assert her independence in a strict Punjabi Sikh community. She’s calling it Everything Was Goodbye.

Apart from Ranj Dhaliwal’s Daaku, not many novels have been written about the Indo-Canadian experience. Few books speak to “the first generation that grew up here,” says 35-year-old Basran, who is seeking an agent and a publisher. “I’m hoping it will resonate with all kinds of people.”

Not only that, but the novel is a semi-finalist in the Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award competition, one of 100 entries out of 5,000 chosen by Penguin editors for the final read-through to narrow the field to ten books, which will then be chosen by Amazon readers… and presumably will be published by Penguin, although there’s no information about that on the Amazon site that I could find. Check out the excerpt of Everything Was Good-bye for as a free download from Amazon.