Mohawk writer Alicia Elliott has won the 2024 Amazon First Novel Award for And Then She Fell.
The $60,000 prize recognizes the best debut Canadian novel of the year.
And Then She Fell is a horror novel which follows a young woman named Alice struggling to navigate the early days of motherhood and live up to the unrealistic expectations of those around her.
“It means so much to me to be read so generously and have [the judges] see the story that I was writing and acknowledge it,” said Elliott in her acceptance speech, through tears.
There was a period when she wasn’t sure whether the book would be published as it was, she said. “The things that I was trying to express with it were, I understood, very difficult and writing about madness in a way that invites people in as opposed to just channeling or basically making mad people the villains and everything — I mean, judging by the Goodreads reviews — [was] something very difficult to understand.”
Elliott is based in Brantford, Ont. Her writing has been published most recently in Room, Grain and The New Quarterly. She is also the author of the nonfiction book A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, a columnist for CBC Arts and CBC Books named her a writer to watch in 2019. She was chosen by Tanya Talaga as the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award.
The Sunday Magazine22:11Alicia Elliott on fiction, motherhood and mental illness
Following her acclaimed essay collection A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, Mohawk writer Alicia Elliott is back with a new novel that draws on her own deeply personal experiences to tell a story of motherhood, mental illness and intergenerational trauma. And Then She Fell follows Alice, a young Haudenosaunee mother who goes through a kind of looking glass, as she deals with postpartum depression and married life away from her family and traditions. It’s a story of difficult truths, told with humour, horror and a bit of surrealism. Elliott joins Rebecca Zandbergen to talk about the novel, the personal experiences that inspired it, and best practices for sharing difficult stories – both in fiction and beyond.
The other finalists were Jordan Abel for Empty Spaces, Caroline Dawson for As the Andes Disappeared, Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall for Tauhou, Janika Oza for A History of Burning and Amanda Peters for The Berry Pickers. They will each receive $6,000.
The jury was composed of writers Billy-Ray Belcourt, francesca ekwuyasi, Kaie Kellough and Souvankham Thammavongsa.
Last year’s winner was Jasmine Sealy for The Island of Forgetting.
Other past winners include Stéphane Larue for The Dishwasher, Joy Kogawa for Obasan, Rohinton Mistry for Such a Long Journey, Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces and Madeleine Thien for Certainty.
The 2024 youth short story category winner was Khaliya Rajan from Vancouver for her story Waves. She will receive $5,000.
The other youth short story finalists were Noaah Karim from Vancouver; Abigail McGhie from Ottawa; Avery Moschee from Newmarket, Ont.; Natalie Webber from Nova Scotia and Payten Josephine Woldanski. They will each take home $500.