Shandi Mitchell picks up a $10,000 prize for her first novel.Shandi Mitchell picks up a $10,000 prize for her first novel. (Shandi Mitchell)

First-time novelist Shandi Mitchell has won Atlantic Canada's top literary prize.

Mitchell picked up the Thomas Head Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award for her novel, Under This Unbroken Sky, at the Atlantic Book Awards on Wednesday night.

The Nova Scotia writer was nearly speechless as she took to the podium at the ceremony in Dartmouth.

Just a few days ago she was in India, where she was honoured as the regional winner for Canada and the Caribbean as part of the 2010 Commonwealth Writers Prize.

"I really don't know what to say here," she said. "Maybe I'm still in Delhi and this is a dream. Is that's what's happened? Because it could be."

Mitchell beat out authors Linden MacIntyre and Michael Crummey for the top fiction award. MacIntyre was nominated for The Bishop's Man and Crummey for Galore.

CBC journalist MacIntyre won the Atlantic Independent Booksellers' Choice Award and the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.

Mitchell, who receives $15,000, also won the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award for her novel, about a Ukrainian family trying to survive in the Prairies.

Other award winners include:

  • APMA Best Atlantic-published Book Award: Birds of Newfoundland Field Guide, by Ian Warkentin and Sandy Newton (Boulder Publications)
  • Mayor's Award for Literary Achievement: Trudy Carey
  • Dartmouth Book Award (Non-fiction): Greg Cochkanoff and Bob Chaulk, SS Atlantic: The White Star Line's First Disaster at Sea (Goose Lane Editions)
  • Democracy 250 Atlantic Book Award for Historical Writing: Greg Cochkanoff and Bob Chaulk, SS Atlantic: The White Star Line's First Disaster at Sea (Goose Lane Editions)
  • Evelyn Richardson Memorial Literary Prize for Non-fiction: John DeMont, Coal Black Heart (Doubleday Canada)
  • Mayor's Award for Excellence in Book Illustration: Mike Holmes, This American Drive: An Illustrated Road Trip (Invisible Publishing)
  • Lillian Shepherd Memorial Award for Illustration: Scott A. Keating, What Colour is the Ocean?, by Gary Collins with Maggie Rose Parsons (Flanker Press)
  • Atlantic Poetry Prize: Tonja Gunvaldsen Klaassen, Lean-To (Gaspereau Press)