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 national bestseller published in Canada, the US, the UK, Commonwealth and the Spanish-speaking world. It won the Edna Staebler National Award for Nonfiction, was a finalist for the BC and Yukon Book Prizes was selected as a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers pick and a BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week and is an Amazon.com Best seller and Editor’s pick. 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 at UBC’s School of Creative Writing.
· 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.
Narrative structure, inspirational and underdog narratives, travel and adventure writing, diversity and underrepresented voices, and political, historical, environmental, and philosophical nonfiction.