Presented every second year, The Downhome Fiction Award, sponsored by The Downhome and jointly presented by the Writers’ Alliance of Newfoundland and Labrador and the Literary Arts Foundation of NL, this award selects from two years of fiction titles by Newfoundland authors. This year’s shortlisted fiction titles really showcase the sheer range of talented writers in this province. Kenneth J. Harvey is an always absorbing very diverse international literary superstar who  explores all facets of fiction: straight-up literary fiction in one book, like Inside, or something more genre-blending, like The Town That Forgot How to Breathe, or his own narrative invention, as in Blackstrap Hawco: a “transcomposite narrative.” Jessica Grant (my favourite literary discovery of the year) might well be the freshest, most distinctive and original voice in the country, and CanLit icon Lisa Moore is the best barebones, sentence-level writer in the country.

From the shortlist press release:

Kenneth J. Harvey’s Blackstrap Hawco – “A powerful and frankly told epic about working class survival, which traces the history of the Hawco family as it intertwines with the ubiquitous calamity of life in Newfoundland.”

Jessica Grant’s Come, Thou Tortoise – “An offbeat story featuring an opinionated tortoise and an IQ-challenged narrator who find themselves in the middle of a life-changing mystery.”

Lisa Moore’s February – “A moving portrait of how one woman reconstructs a life, after the sinking of the Ocean Ranger steals her husband”