2012 Top 5 Canada reads Choice in BC/Yukon

Winner of the 2011 Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize

Search For the Great BC Novel Contest

2008 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award semi-finalist

Everything Was Good-bye centers around Meena, a young Indo Canadian woman growing up in the lower mainland of British Columbia and traces her life as she struggles to assert her independence in a Punjabi community. Raised by her tradition bound widowed mother, Meena knows the freedoms of her Canadian peers can never be hers, but unlike her sisters, she is reluctant to submit to a life that is defined by a suitable marriage. Though a narrative moving between race and culture, it is ultimately a story of love, loss and self-acceptance amidst shifting cultural ideals.

Gurjinder Basran is the award-winning author of three novels: Everything Was Goodbye (Penguin Canada), winner of the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize and a Chatelaine Magazine Book Club pick; Someone You Love Is Gone (Penguin Canada and Harper Perennial); and Help! I’m Alive! (ECW Press). A Simon Fraser University, Writer’s Studio alumna hailed by the CBC as one of “Ten Canadian women writers you need to read,” Basran balances the demands of her creative life with her “other” career in the tech sector. She is currently the Director of Learning, Development and Communications at Bell Canada. She lives in Delta, BC with her family.

Gurjinder Basran's profile page