Cree author and lawyer Michelle Good continues to rack up nominations for the First Novel Award.

Amazon Canada and the Walrus announced the top six novelists on Tuesday for the prize of $ 60,000.

Good, who is from Red Pheasant Cree Nation in Saskatchewan, is shortlisted for “Five Little Indians,” by HarperCollins Publishers.

The book, which follows a group of residential school survivors trying to forge new lives in Vancouver, was a Writers’ Trust finalist and is now fighting for the Governor General’s Fiction Award.

Francesca Ekwuyasi of Halifax with Arsenal Pulp Press ‘Butter Honey Pig Bread’ is also gaining momentum on the awards circuit.

The intergenerational story of three Nigerian women is also the Governor General’s Fiction Finalist and shortlisted for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Jael Richardson of Brampton, Ont., Executive Director of the Festival of Literary Diversity, is nominated for his dystopian tale “Gutter Child,” by HarperCollins Publishers.

Toronto’s Marlowe Granados also nodded for her summer in New York play, “Happy Hour,” from Flying Books.

John Elizabeth Stintzi, who grew up in Bergland, Ont., Who won the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers in 2019, is shortlisted for “Vanishing Monuments”, from Arsenal Pulp Press, about a non-binary photographer who reconnects with their mother who has dementia.

Sheung-King, of Toronto, completes the shortlist for “You eat an orange. You are naked, ”from Book * hug Press, about a young translator traveling the world with her anonymous lover.

The winner will be announced in a virtual ceremony on May 27.

The grand prize is worth $ 60,000, while each shortlisted author receives $ 6,000.

Founded in 1976, previous First Novel Award winners are Michael Ondaatje, WP Kinsella, Nino Ricci, David Bezmozgis, Andre Alexis and Madeleine Thien.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published on May 4, 2021.

Adina Bresge, The Canadian Press