Shandi Mitchell is an author and filmmaker. Her award-winning short films Baba’s House and Tell Me have been featured at festivals across North America including TIFF, Eastman Kodak House, New York, and Vancouver. Awards for Baba’s House include the Kodak Cinematography Award, CBC-WIFT Toronto Writers Award, Kodak Filmmakers Award, Best Canadian Short, Best Art Direction, and two Gemini nominations. In 2008, she was awarded the Canada Council’s Victor Martin-Lynch Staunton Endowment in Media Arts. Her debut indie feature, The Disappeared (2012) screened at numerous festivals, nationally and internationally, garnering awards and nominations for performance, direction, sound design, and Best Feature. She has also worked as a story editor, story consultant, and served as a reader for various film funding agencies. She is an alumna of WIDC in Banff.
Her debut novel Under This Unbroken Sky was simultaneously published by Penguin Canada, Weidenfeld & Nicolson (UK) and Harper Collins (US) in August 2009. It sold in nine countries, including translation rights for Chinese, Hebrew, Dutch and Italian. Under This Unbroken Sky won the 2010 Commonwealth regional Prize for First Book (Canada/Caribbean), the Thomas Head Raddall Fiction Award, the Margaret and John Savage First Book Award, and the 2012 Kobzar Literary Award. It was also longlisted for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award.
Raised on the prairies, Shandi now makes her home on the east coast of Canada, very close to the water, where she lives with her husband, Alan, and their dog, Annie.