About

Photo by Olivia Li

Shashi Bhat’s most recent novel, The Most Precious Substance on Earth, was published by McClelland & Stewart/Penguin Random House Canada (Fall 2021) and Grand Central Publishing/Hachette in the US (Spring 2022), and was a finalist for the 2022 Governor General’s Award for fiction. Her collection of short stories, Death by a Thousand Cuts, is forthcoming from McClelland & Stewart in 2024. Her debut novel, The Family Took Shape (Cormorant, 2013), was a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award.

Her fiction has appeared in publications across North America, including Hazlitt, The Malahat Review, The New Quarterly, The Fiddlehead, The Threepenny Review, The Missouri Review, Best Canadian Stories 2018, 2019 & 2021, Journey Prize Stories 24 & 30, and others. She won the 2018 Journey Prize. She has been a finalist for the National Magazine Award for fiction and the Bronwen Wallace Award, and has been long-listed for the Commonwealth Prize.

Shashi has served on juries for the Canada Council, the BC Arts Council, and the National Magazine Awards, and has been a contest judge for The Malahat Review, The Fiddlehead, Room magazine, and the Professional Writers Association of Canada. She is a judge for the 2024 Commonwealth Prize. She has given readings and participated on panels for the Vancouver Writers Fest, Eden Mills Writers’ Festival, Jaipur Literary Festival, Word Vancouver, the Growing Room Festival, Fraser Valley Literary Festival, and other events.

Shashi holds an MFA from The Johns Hopkins University and a BA from Cornell University. She is editor-in-chief of EVENT magazine and teaches creative writing at Douglas College.