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February 28, 2006

AHMAD SAIDULLAH WINS CBC LITERARY AWARD

I am thrilled to announce that my short story Happiness And Other Disorders won second prize in the 2005 CBC Literary Awards held at La Grande Bibliotheque in Montreal, Canada on 26 February 2006. 3500 entries in all English and French categories were sent in by Canadians from all over the world. The English fiction jurors were Random House Canada publisher Anne Collins and award-winning novelists Catherine Bush and Eden Robinson. Prizes were awarded on the author's use of language, originality of subject and writing style. Novelist Bill Richardson and Montreal journalist Chantal Jolie were the MCs at the event. Richardson said that the jurors had commended Happiness, a comic souveti which is a 7-page-long sentence, for its experimental style, humour, and empathetic breadth. Apparently, I am the third Canadian South Asian writer after Michael Ondaatje and Shauna Singh Baldwin to be recognized by Canada's top literary short story prize and the first since the awards were redesigned in 2001.

Past winners have also included Carol Shields, Gwendolyn MacEwan, Robert Munsch, Susan Musgrave, Leon Rooke, Michel Tremblay, and Monique Proulx.

Happiness will be published in the June 2006 edition of enRoute, Air Canada's flight magazine and will reach a million readers. The story will also be read on CBC Radio Canada's national airwaves at a later date and the entire CBC Literary Awards will be broadcast there at some time. For writeups on the winners click here.

Canada Council for the Arts. Air Canada, and enRoute were the principal partners for the awards.

Posted by Ahmad Saidullah at February 28, 2006 05:09 PM

Comments

Congratulations, Ahmed! Very exciting!

Posted by: Mary Anne Mohanraj [TypeKey Profile Page] at March 4, 2006 08:02 AM

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