MICHELLE GOOD pursued an MFA at the University of British Columbia – while continuing to practise law and manage her own firm – with the specific intent to write what became Five Little . She had been developing the idea for years and believed it was an important story to tell, however it might be received.
Since its release in April 2020, the novel about five residential school survivors navigating posttraumatic stress in different ways has won the Amazon Canada First Novel Award, the Governor General’s Literary Award for Englishlanguage fiction, the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for literary fiction, and was on more lists besides – far exceeding Good’s expectations for her debut. It has been optioned for a television adaptation and has been sitting firmly on bestsellers lists for weeks.