Eliza
Robertson
Eliza Robertson grew up on Vancouver Island and now lives in Montreal. Her debut collection, Wallflowers, was shortlisted for the East Anglia Book Award, the Danuta Gleed Short Story Prize, and selected as a New York Times Editor’s Choice. Her critically acclaimed first novel, Demi-Gods, was a Globe and Mail and National Post book of the year and the winner of the 2018 QWF Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize. She studied creative writing at the University of Victoria and the University of East Anglia, where she received the Man Booker Scholarship and Curtis Brown Prize. In addition to being shortlisted for the CBC Short Story Prize and Journey Prize, Robertson’s stories have won the Commonwealth Short Story Prize, Elizabeth Jolley Prize, and Berlin Writing Prize.
Award History
Jury Citation
“A deftly-told story of two eavesdroppers, one a linguist, the other, professionally tuned to acoustics, who listen – over and over – to every scrap of a tragedy. Well-timed and yet still carefully fractured enough to be jarring, Eliza Robertson’s ‘My Sister Sang’ is a marvel of unexpected directions and sharp edges. Even with the distance and detachment of its characters from the centre of its disaster, there is no easy peace, no mere scientific examination of cause and effect: this is writing as carefully crafted and fine as pastry, with thin, perfect layers where every line serves to strengthen the rest.” — 2013 Journey Prize Jury (Miranda Hill, Miguel Syjuco, and Alison Pick)
