Carol Shaben

BA(U of A), MFA(UBC)

Carol Shaben (she/her) is an award-winning author and journalist. Her first book, Into the Abyss, is a Canadian and an Amazon bestseller and an Amazon Editor’s Pick for Best Nonfiction. It won the Edna Staebler Award for Nonfiction, and was selected as both a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week. It has been featured on the popular American podcast Snap Judgment, and optioned for film. Carol’s second book, The Marriott Cell, ­co-written with Egyptian Canadian journalist Mohamed Fahmy, was long listed for the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize, named one of The Globe & Mail’s 100 Best Books of the Year, and won the Ontario Historical Society Huguenot Award. A former CBC Radio journalist, Carol is the recipient of two National Magazine Awards, including a Gold Medal for Investigative Journalism. She was a longtime Faculty Editor at the Banff Centre’s renowned Literary Journalism Program and has taught at the University of British Columbia’s School of Creative Writing.

Selected Publications

• Into the Abyss: How a Deadly Plane Crash changed the lives of a Pilot, a Politician, a Criminal and a Cop, Random House Canada, 2012, Grand Central Publishing (USA), 2013, Macmillan (UK/Commonwealth), 2013,  Roca Editorial (Spanish International), 2013, Editora Record Limitada (Brazil), 2013.
• The Marriott Cell: An Epic Journey from Cairo’s Scorpion Prison to Freedom, co-authored with Mohamed Fahmy, Penguin Random House Canada, 2016.

Interests

Literary journalism, narrative structure, inspirational, personal, and underdog narratives, diversity and underrepresented voices, experimental nonfiction, and lyric forms.