Sharon Bala is trapped on a rock in the cold north Atlantic. Please send mangoes.

Sharon’s second novel, Good Guys, is on shelves now and is a finalist for the Toronto Book Awards. Publishers Weekly calls it “quietly profound” and a “darkly comic tale.” Her bestselling debut novel, The Boat People, won the Harper Lee Prize for Legal Fiction and the Newfoundland & Labrador Book Award, was a finalist for Canada Reads, the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award, and was longlisted for the Aspen Words Literary Prize and the International DUBLIN Literary Award.

Published in January 2018, it is available worldwide with translations in French, German, Arabic, and Turkish. The unpublished manuscript won the Percy Janes First Novel Award and was short listed for the Fresh Fish Award.

Sharon’s short fiction has won the Journey Prize and three Newfoundland and Labrador Arts and Letters awards. Her stories have been published in Best Canadian Stories 2024, Hazlitt, Grain, Maisonneuve, The Dalhousie Review, Riddle Fence, Room, Prism international, The New Quarterly, and in an anthology called Racket: New Writing From Newfoundland. She is currently the Creative Non-Fiction Editor at Riddle Fence, where she previously published arts critique. Her essays have been published in Maclean’s Magazine and The Globe & Mail.

Sharon is a member of the Port Authority writing group. They can occasionally be found on Friday mornings, writing quietly at a microbrewery near the St. John’s harbour.

In her past lives, she worked in public relations, event planning, and enjoyed a brief stint as a British housewife. Today, she earns her bread with words. She's available for speaking engagements, to write articles and essays, adjudicate competitions, teach workshops, for manuscript evaluations, editorial aid, and mentorship. 

Sharon holds a BA (Honours) in Psychology and History from Queen’s University and an MA in History from the University of Toronto. She lives in St. John’s, NL, with her husband, the mathemagician Tom Baird.