Esi Edugyan
Photo courtesy of BBC NewsAt the age of thirty-four, quite young for a famous novelist, she's just won the Scotia Bank Giller Award. What a boost for the career of Victoria writer Esi Edugyan. The competition for the prize is very steep. Receiving it meant she beat out the likes of Lynn Coady (The Antagonist) and Michael Ondaatje (The Cat's Table).
Edugyan's winning novel, Half-blood Blues, was originally slated to be published by Key Porter, but the company collapsed a few months ago and she had to seek a new publisher, Thomas Allen. The book, already a bestseller before the prize was announced, was also nominated for the Man Booker International Prize.
Edugyan's parents immigrated to Canada from Ghana and she was born in Calgary. Half-blood Blues, which portrays black musicians living in Nazi Germany, was inspired in part by time she spent as a writer in residence in Stuttgart. Not surprisingly, she's also a fan of the blues.
Edugyan's first novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne (Knopf Canada 2004) also did very well.
Though I haven't read her work yet, I'm confident that Esi Edugyan is definitely a writer we'll be hearing a lot more about.