Alicia Elliott (Alex Jacobs-Blum)

Alicia Elliott has been named the winner of the 2024 Amazon Canada First Novel Award for And Then She Fell.

The $60,000 prize was announced at a live event in Toronto on June 6.

The novel, published by Doubleday Canada, explores Indigenous culture, motherhood, and the mental health of a young Mohawk woman. “With its gripping narrative and surreal twists, Alicia Elliott’s debut novel is an unflinching exploration of the human psyche and the transformative power of storytelling,” noted francesca ekwuyasi, one of the judges for the prize.

Elliott is a Mohawk writer and editor who lives in Brantford, Ontario.

And Then She Fell is Elliott’s second book. Her first, the bestselling nonfiction A Mind Spread Out on the Ground, was nominated for the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction and won the Forest of Reading Evergreen Award. Elliott was the 2018 recipient of the RBC Taylor Emerging Writer Award.

And Then She Fell was chosen from a shortlist of six titles announced in May that included first works of fiction by Jordan Abel, Caroline Dawson, Kōtuku Titihuia Nuttall, Janika Oza, and Amanda Peters. The shortlisted authors each receive $6,000.

The First Novel Award is sponsored by Amazon and co-presented with The Walrus. Billy-Ray Belcourt, francesca ekwuyasi, Kaie Kellough, and Souvankham Thammavongsa judged the 2024 prize.

The winner for the Youth Short Story category was also announced at the event. Sixteen-year-old Khaliya Rajan of Vancouver won the $5,000 prize for her short story “Waves” that will be published online by The Walrus later this year. The story was one of six shortlisted by writers between the ages of 13 and 17. The finalists each receive a $500 prize.