Brandon Reid Shortlisted for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing

Brandon Reid has been nominated for the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing for his debut coming-of-age novel, Beautiful Beautiful (Nightwood Editions, 2023). The award was founded to encourage emerging writers of both fiction and non-fiction, with a grand prize of $5,000 for the winners of each category. Winners will be announced in late summer/early fall of this year on the Stanford University Libraries website.

Beautiful Beautiful explores indigeneity, masculinity and cultural tradition through twelve-year-old Derik Mormin, who travels with his father and family friend to Bella Bella, BC for his grandfather’s funeral. Along the way, he uncovers the traumatic history of his ancestors, considers his relationship to masculinity and explores the contrast between rural and urban lifestyles in hopes of reconciling the seemingly unreconcilable, the beauty of each the Indigenous and “Western” way of life—hence beautiful beautiful.

Brandon Reid holds a B.Ed. from UBC with a specialization in Indigenous education, and a journalism diploma from Langara College. His work has been published in the Barely South Review, the Richmond Review and The Province. He is a member of the Heiltsuk First Nation, with a mix of Indigenous and English ancestry and resides in Richmond, BC. In addition to being on the 2024 William Saroyan International Prize for Writing shortlist, he is also a finalist for the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. 

The Saroyan Prize is a biennial competition jointly awarded by the Stanford University Libraries and the William Saroyan Foundation. It commemorates the life, legacy and intentions of William Saroyan—author, artist, dramatist, composer—and is intended to encourage new or emerging writers, rather than to recognize established literary figures.