Heidi L. M. Jacobs wins $15K Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour for debut novel

Jacobs is at present the English and historical past librarian at the College of Windsor. Molly of the Mall is her initial e book.

The novel tells the story of Molly MacGregor, an aspiring novelist residing in Edmonton, who spends much of her time writing university expression papers as a substitute of novels and sells footwear in the Most significant Mall on Earth. Molly of the Mall explores Molly’s like for the penned phrase, romance and her sophisticated like for her town.

“It is really about a young woman who is an English important, and she’s bought a summer position at a quite huge purchasing mall in Edmonton — which we’ve left anonymous,” she advised CBC Radio’s Afternoon Push host Chris dela Torre.

“It is really mainly about her attempting to navigate the earth she’s finding herself in when she’s type of juxtaposing it with the earth that she reads about.”

A panel of visitors and judges from throughout the region whittled the eighty four preliminary submissions to a longlist of eleven, with only a few publications finally getting chosen for the shortlist. 

This year’s other finalists had been Amy Spurway for her novel Crow and Drew Hayden Taylor, a playwright and novelist, for his engage in Cottagers and Indians.

They will each individual obtain a $3,000 prize.

Crow  follows a woman diagnosed with a few very unpredictable and inoperable mind tumours, who abandons her life in Toronto to keep in her mother’s scruffy trailer in rural Cape Breton and decides to generate a memoir.

Taylor’s Cottagers and Indians explores the partnership among Indigenous residents and recreational cottagers residing on the exact lake in the Kawarthas region of Ontario and it can be dependent on a real story that took put in the Kawartha Lakes region of Ontario.

Owing to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the medal and dollars prizes will be mailed to the recipients.

The a few authors will be honoured at subsequent year’s gala.

Very last year’s winner was Cathal Kelly for his memoir Boy Marvel.

Other past winners include Patrick deWitt, Cassie Stocks and Terry Fallis.