Sharon Bala's bestselling debut novel, The Boat People, won the 2019 Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and the 2020 Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award for Fiction, was a finalist for Canada Reads 2018, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and was longlisted for the 2019 Aspen Words Literary Prize and the 2020 International Dublin Literary Award. In 2017, Sharon won the Writers' Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for her short story "Butter Tea at Starbucks." She lives in St. John's, Newfoundland, where she is currently the Creative Non-Fiction Editor at Riddle Fence.
This biography was last updated on 01/20/2026.
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