Six Star Magazine Six Star Magazine 2012 | Page 12

“The different ways that they
can navigate society and
the different restrictions
that they face - I was very
interested in exploring that.”
-Esi Edugyan

2011 Half-Blood Blues,
Esi Edugyan
Recent Giller winner
Esi Edugyan has won
major honours for her
novel Half-Blood Blues.
In addition to the
prestigious Giller,
Edugyan’s book won the Ethel Wilson
Fiction Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf
Book Award. It was also short-listed for
top honour, and was a finalist in
Canada for the Governor General’s
and Rogers Writers’ Trust Prizes.
Edugyan herself has a most unusual
background. Born in Calgary to Ghanaian
émigré parents who met at a moonlanding party in San Francisco, she
to residency across Europe, living
everywhere from Iceland to Spain and
Germany before settling down in Victoria,
B.C. “Every school I went to, there we &P