Announced today at a ceremony in Toronto, Pasha Malla has won the $20,000 Trillium Book Award for fiction in English for his debut short story collection, The Withdrawal Method!

Malla, of London, Ontario, recently won the $10,000 Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the same collection. The book was also longlisted for the Giller Prize, and shortlisted for the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for “Best First Book” in the region of the Caribbean and Canada.

Other contenders in the English-language fiction category included Nino Ricci (Origin of Species), fellow Anansi author Kevin Connolly (Revolver), Helen Humphreys (Coventry), Ibi Kaslik (The Angel Riots) and, Charles Wilkins Thunder (In the Land of Long Fingernails)

Recorded before The Withdrawal Method had yet to hit bookstore shelves, listen to Pasha’s mother interview him about his writing process.

Download the reading guide for The Withdrawal Method. (PDF download will begin immediately.)

Adam Sol, author of Jeremiah, Ohio was a finalist for the Trillium Book Award for Poetry. That honour went to Jeramy Dodds for his collection Crabwise to the Hounds, published by Coach House Books.

Established by the Ontario government in 1987 to recognize the excellence, quality, and diversity of Ontario’s writers, and to support marketing and public awareness for their works, The Trillium Award is open to books in any genre: fiction, non-fiction, drama, children’s books, and poetry. This prestigious Award is the province’s leading award for literature. Past Trillium winners including Margaret Atwood, Michael Ondaatje, Timothy Findley, Camilla Gibb, and Anne Michaels.

To learn more about the Trillium Book Awards visit their official website.