English Lessons and Other Stories

Winner, CBC Canadian Literary Award and Friends of American Writers Award

The new reader’s guide edition of Shauna Singh Baldwin’s literary debut features the fifteen stories from the original collection, an interview with the author, an original afterword, and her suggested reading list. When Shauna Singh Baldwin’s debut collection was first published in 1996, it took readers by storm. Reviewers discovered a new voice; listeners tuned in to the stories on CBC Radio. Since then, Baldwin has written two award-winning novels and, in 2007, a second story collection, We Are Not in Pakistan. Dramatizing the lives of Indian women from 1919 to the present, from India to North America, Shauna Singh Baldwin travels from the intimate sphere of family to the wasteland of office and university.

AUTHOR

Shauna Singh Baldwin

Shauna Singh Baldwin’s first novel, What the Body Remembers, was published in 1999 by Knopf Canada, Transworld UK, Doubleday USA, and (as an audiobook) by Goose Lane Editions. It received the 2000 Commonwealth Writer’s Prize for Best Book (Canada-Caribbean region) and has been translated into fourteen languages. Her second novel The Tiger Claw was a finalist for Canada’s Giller Prize 2004. Shauna is the author of English Lessons and Other Stories and coauthor of A Foreign Visitor’s Survival Guide to America. Her awards include the 1995 Writer’s Union of Canada Award for short prose and the 1997 Canadian Literary Award. English Lessons received the 1996 Friends of American Writers Award.

A former radio producer and ecommerce consultant, her fiction and poems are widely published in literary magazines and anthologies in the US, Canada, and India. She has served on several juries and teaches short courses in creative writing. Shauna holds an MBA from Marquette University and an MFA from the University of British Columbia. We Are Not in Pakistan: Stories was published by Goose Lane Editions in 2007. Shauna’s third novel, The Selector of Souls, was published by Knopf Canada in September 2012. Reviews, reading schedule, and interviews at: www.ShaunaSinghBaldwin.com.

Reviews

Dramatizing the lives of Indian women from 1919 to the present, from India to North America, Shauna Singh Baldwin travels from the intimate sphere of family to the public space of office and university. In this powerful collection, some characters say little but know much. Others, imprisoned by silence, use it with bloody force against their oppressors. A few harness the power of wordlessness to seize freedom.
“Baldwin’s skill is revealed as she takes up small, ordinary incidents and weaves them into beautiful, interesting stories. The language in her book is simple and effective. With her subtle, incremental touches, her characters become alive and their life situations reveal new aspects of their lives.”
– Prince George Citizen

“Baldwin’s prose is precise, nuanced, and sensual. She threads her stories with ravishing glints of colour, that explode against the pallid landscape of Canada.”
– Toronto Star

“Both sweet and sour… a fascinating collection, rich in cultural insight.”
– Edmonton Journal

“Each of these superb short stories shuttles between the intricate threads of family, the rich, sturdy fabric of ancient Indian tradition, and the somewhat more ready-to-wear culture of North America.”
– Georgia Straight

“The vicious circle of Indian women attempting to balance traditional roles with views and lifestyles outside their inherited gender and homeland.”
– National Post