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Gurjinder Basran (TWS 2006): Winner of the Great BC Novel Contest
Gurjinder Basran’s (TWS 2006) novel, Everything Was Goodbye, has recently been announced as the winner of Mother Tongue Publishing’s Search for the Great BC Novel Contest!
Jack Hodgins, the final judge has chosen Everything Was Goodbye to be published by Mother Tongue Publishing in the fall of 2010:
“Gurjinder Basran’s ambitious novel, Everything Was Goodbye, is the fascinating story of a strong-willed Indo-Canadian woman raised in the Lower Mainland, and traces her life from adolescence to middle-age — a life of rebellion against the expectations of a tradition-bound widowed mother and the demands of her community. Meena’s story bring us intimately into her world, and allows us to identify with the difficulties of trying to live in the culture of a new world while dealing with expectations and demands originating in another. Although she is to a certain extent representative, Meena is also a unique rebel, imaginative and passionate, torn between a weakening attachment to her family and her desire to be part of a larger Canadian culture she has been raised within. There is heartbreak here, and violence, but there is romance and bravery as well, and some triumph. Above all, there is the reward of getting to know this bravely determined young woman.” - Jack Hodgins
Gurjinder Basran studied creative writing at Simon Fraser University and the Banff Center for the Arts. Her work was shortlisted for Amazon.com’s 2008 search for the Next Breakthrough Novel and earned her a place in the Vancouver Sun’s annual speculative arts and culture article, “Ones to Watch”. A 2006 graduate of Simon Fraser Universities award-winning Writer’s Studio, Gurjinder has read her work at the Vancouver International Writer’s Festival and has been both a panelist and facilitator on writing at the 2007 Writer’s Studio alumni symposium. Gurjinder lives in Delta, British Columbia with her husband and two sons. This is her first novel.
The other novelists who were short-listed were: Gillean Chase, DC Reid, Kuya Minogue, and Gillian Wigmore. Congratulations to them, as well!