Role
2015 Keynote Speaker
Born in Montreal, Shauna Singh Baldwin grew up in India. Her first book A Foreign Visitor’s Survival Guide to America sold out but went unnoticed.
In 1996, Shauna won the Friends of American Writers Prize for her collection English Lessons and Other Stories, and the 1997 CBC Literary Award for her story Satya. Her first novel, What the Body Remembers won the Commonwealth Writer’s Prize (Canada-Caribbean). A 20th Anniversary edition will be published in 2020.
Shauna’s novel The Tiger Claw was a finalist for the 2004 Giller Prize. Cross-cultural stories from her collection We Are Not in Pakistan were anthologized internationally. Her third novel The Selector of Souls won the Anne Powers Fiction Prize. Her play We Are So Different Now was staged in Toronto by the Sawitri Theatre Group. Reluctant Rebellions: New and Selected Non-fiction was published in 2016. The South Asian Literary Association presented Shauna their 2018 Distinguished Achievement Award.
Shauna’s work has been translated into 14 languages and published in magazines, anthologies, and newspapers. Her B.Comm. (Hons) degree is from Delhi University. She holds an MBA from Marquette University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia.
We tell, read and watch stories in every language because we wonder how it must feel to be someone else, to have that person’s point of view. We tell, read and watch stories to find out how others might deal with arrivals, departures and journeys, how they have solved problems that seem intractable, insurmountable, how they beat the system. Stories are the first virtual reality.
