TORONTO – Mona Awad has received top honours from the Amazon.ca First Novel Award.

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the award, the Montreal-born author received a $40,000 prize for her debut novel “13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (Penguin Canada) at a ceremony held at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto on Thursday night.

The prize was co-presented by Amazon and the Walrus Foundation.

The award had a lengthy history in honouring and beginning the careers of notable Canadian novelists,with past winners including Michael Ondaatje, W.P. Kinsella, Nino Ricci, Joseph Boyden and David Bezmozgis.

The five other finalists each received $4,000.

They were:

“The Afterlife of Birds” by Elizabeth Philips (Freehand Books)

“Seep” by Mark Giles (Anvil Press)

“Backspring” by Judith McCormack (Biblioasis)

“Do You Think This is Strange?” by Aaron Cully Drake (Touchwood Editions)

“Book of Sands” by Karim Alrawi (HarperCollins)

Head judge University of Toronto professor emeritus Russell Brown was joined by short list judges Walrus fiction editor Nick Mount and award-winning writer Gurjinder Basran on the panel.

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