COVER REVEAL for THE WORLD SO WIDE by Zilla Jones – out on April 26, 2025 with Cormorant Books!
Felicity Alexander is supposed to be charming audiences at New York’s Metropolitan Opera, not placed under house arrest in Grenada in October 1983 when the Americans invade.
Born and raised in Winnipeg, the daughter of a Grenadian woman and an absent white father, she is blessed with enviable beauty and an extraordinary singing voice. Arriving in London to study opera in 1965, she finds early success and joy on stage, and a sense of belonging in Claude Buckingham’s arms. Members of the West Indian Students Association, Claude and his friends are law students and activists. They plan to return home to Grenada and overthrow the corrupt dictator, “Uncle” Percy Tibbs.
Felicity and Claude’s intense affair cannot survive their competing destinies. Claude brings revolution to Grenada and becomes a Minister in the new Black Pearls of Freedom government; Felicity devotes herself to music, conquering the racism and sexism of the opera world to rise to international stardom. The brighter she shines, the more she struggles to find her place and purpose in life.
Her career in ascendance, Felicity accepts an invitation to perform in Grenada. The red sky of revolution calls to her almost as much as the hope of Claude’s embrace. But their reunion is interrupted by a coup. Surrounded by soldiers and guns, Felicity’s voice is born anew. She has found her cause. (From Cormorant Books)
Zilla Jones is an African-Canadian woman based in Winnipeg. In 2023, she was a Journey Prize winner and a finalist in the RBC/Bronwen Wallace fiction competition. She has also won the Malahat Review Open Season Award, the Jacob Zilber Prize for Short Fiction, the FreeFall short fiction award and placed second in the Prairie Fire and Austin Clarke contests. Jones shortlisted for the 2024 Writers’ Union of Canada’s Annual Short Fiction Competition.
Jones made the 2020 CBC Short Story Prize longlist for Our Father and has longlisted twice for her story How to Make a Friend, in 2022 and 2023, before shortlisting in 2024. The same year Jones made the longlist for the 2024 CBC Nonfiction Prize. She was also named a writer to watch by CBC Books in 2024.
Zilla is represented by Léonicka Valcius.
Congratulations Zilla!