Shani Mootoo
Shani Mootoo is the author of the novels Starry Starry Night, Polar Vortex, and Cereus Blooms at Night, as well as the poetry collections Oh Witness Dey!, Cane | Fire, and The Predicament of Or. A four-time Giller Prize nominee, she has also been shortlisted for a Lambda Literary Award and the Dublin Literary Award, and longlisted for the Booker Prize. Mootoo’s honours include the James Duggins Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize, the Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award, and the Library and Archives Canada Scholar Award. She received an honorary Doctor of Letters from Western University. She lives in Bloomfield, Ontario.
Writers & Books
Award History
2022 - Winner
Writers’ Trust Engel Findley Award
Jury Citation
“For three decades, Shani Mootoo has been writing some of this country’s most original and incandescent fiction. With deep understanding and a fearless devotion, she worries at the knot of identity and transformation revealing, in an ever-expanding way, the costs of pursuing one’s dreams. Her novels and stories transport us. Set variously against the lushness of the tropics and the stark relief of Canadian winters, they peel back the layers of emotion experienced by those who resist cultural, racial, and sexual hegemony: people whose identities and upbringings are at perilous odds with their desires. These books are alive, audacious, and full of craft; it’s a body of work that inspires us with all its care and unselfconscious trajectory.”Program History
2023 - Selector
Rising Stars
Selection
Author Selected