Shashi
Bhat
Shashi Bhat is the author of the story collection Death by a Thousand Cuts, which was longlisted for the Giller Prize and selected as a Globe and Mail best book of the year for 2024. Her other novels include The Most Precious Substance on Earth, a finalist for a Governor General’s Literary Award for fiction and The Family Took Shape, a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award. Bhat's writing has appeared in publications across North America and she has served on juries for the Canada Council, the BC Arts Council, and the National Magazine Awards. Bhat has also been a fiction contest judge for The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, and Room magazine. Winner of the 2018 Writers’ Trust McClelland and Stewart Journey Prize, she has also been a finalist for the National Magazine Award for fiction, the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers, and the Commonwealth Prize. She is editor-in-chief of EVENT magazine and teaches creative writing at Douglas College. Bhat lives in Vancouver.
Award History
Jury Citation
In Shashi Bhat’s “Mute,” rooms open into other rooms, and each one is furnished with an inventory of meticulous detail, right down to the roaches scuttling across the floor and the narrator who puts on heels to rise above them. It is a story about fear and loneliness, failed connections and existential questions, as well as a darkly funny take on academia, literary snobbery, and popular culture. This is a story where sentences sparkle, each one laying down the path toward a perfect and most unsettling conclusion.
Jury Citation
“Humour and horror combine in startlingly authentic ways in ‘Indian Cooking,’ a moving story that makes brave choices in its characterizations and avoids sentimentality in its depiction of family tragedy.” — 2010 RBC Bronwen Wallace Award Jury (Trevor Cole, Susan Glickman, and Kathryn Kuitenbrouwer)
