Canadian writer wins Commonwealth prize

Eliza Robertson’s ‘exhilarating’ short story earns praise

HAY-ON-WYE, WALES — Victoria author Eliza Robertson has won a Commonwealth Short Story Prize for We Walked on Water, a story set in British Columbia.

The story of a boy who loses his twin sister during an Ironman competition in Penticton, B.C., is one of two overall winners of the U.K. honour, worth £5,000 ($7,840).

She shares the prize announced Friday in Wales with Sharon Millar of Trinidad and Tobago for The Whale House.

“I feel both grateful and not quite believing to be selected as one of the overall winners of this prize,” Robertson said. “I am thrilled and thankful for the opportunity to share my work.”

Short story prize chair Razia Iqbal said “it was impossible to decide” between the two stories, noting they both fulfilled the “criteria of excellence in style, originality and tone.”

“It is a measure of the quality we had to choose from in the shortlist that we unanimously settled on two joint winners,” Iqbal said.

Iqbal called Robertson’s story “exhilarating,” noting its “descriptive writing is nothing short of strikingly beautiful,” and said Millar’s piece “has lush descriptions of landscapes as well as emotion.”

U.K. author Lisa O’Donnell won the main Commonwealth Book Prize of £10,000 for her coming-of-age debut novel, The Death of Bees.

Famed spy novelist John le Carré presented the awards at the Hay Festival.