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Carol Shaben

Carol Shaben

MFA Mentor, Creative Nonfiction

Carol Shaben Carol Shaben

BA(U of A), MFA(UBC)

Carol Shaben is an award-winning author and journalist. Her first book, Into the Abyss, was a national bestseller published in Canada, the US, the UK, Commonwealth and Spanish-speaking world. It won the Edna Staebler National Award for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes. It was also selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick, a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and an Amazon.com Book of the Month, and has been 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 is a Faculty Editor at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity’s Literary Journalism Program and an Adjunct Professor in UBC’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, Pan Macmillan (UK/Commonwealth), 2013,  Roca Libros (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, inspirational and underdog narratives, adventure, diversity and underrepresented voices, experimental nonfiction and lyric forms.