Ali Bryan

Ali Bryan is an award-winning novelist and creative nonfiction writer who explores the what-ifs, the wtfs and the wait-a-minutes of every day. Her first novel Roost, won the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and was the official selection of One Book Nova Scotia. Her second novel, The Figgs, was a finalist for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and has been optioned for TV by Sony Pictures. Her essays have been longlisted for the CBC Canada Writes Creative Nonfiction prize, shortlisted for the Alberta Literary Awards Jon Whyte Memorial Essay Award and nominated for the Pushcart Prize. She won the 2020 Howard O’Hagan Award for Short Story and is a Lieutenant Governor of Alberta Arts Awards Emerging Artist recipient. Her debut YA novel, The Hill, was released in 2021 and was longlisted for the 2021 Wilbur Smith Adventure Writing Prize. Her short-form work has been published in literary journals and magazines in Canada, the US and the UK and has longlisted for the 2022 Commonwealth Short Story Prize. She recently served as the Author in Residence at the Calgary Public Library and as the Edna Staebler Laurier University digital Writer-in-Residence. She has three novels forthcoming in 2023: The Crow Valley Karaoke Championships (Henry Holt), Coq (Freehand Books) and The City (Dottir Press). She lives in the foothills of the Canadian Rockies on Treaty 7 Territory, where she has a wrestling room in her garage and regularly gets choked out by her family.

Thrift shops, mixed martial arts, pigeons, bagpipes, mountains, books, ska, history, Survivor, graffiti, the Olympics, France, punk, tumbleweeds, the paintings of Kim Dorland and Jean Smith and the films of Wes Anderson are a few of her favourite things. Before turning to writing full time, Ali worked in marketing and communications, arts management and as a personal trainer.