Amanda Peters is a Canadian writer from Falmouth, Nova Scotia,[1] whose debut novel The Berry Pickers was the winner of the 2024 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction,[2] 2023 Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers Award,[3] 2024 Crime Writers of Canada Award of Excellence,[4] and 2024 Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction.
[5] Of mixed European and Mi'kmaq heritage, Peters was born and raised in the Annapolis Valley region of Nova Scotia as a member of the Glooscap First Nation.
[6] She was nominated for an Indigenous Voices Award in the Unpublished English Prose category in 2019 for her short story "Pejipug (Winter Arrives)", and won in the same category in 2021 for "Waiting for the Long Night Moon".
The Berry Pickers centres on a young Mi'kmaw girl who goes missing in Maine, depicting the event's lifelong effects on both her birth family and the girl herself, who grows up as the adopted child of a white family with no knowledge of her origins.
[10] Her debut short story collection, Waiting for the Long Night Moon, was published on August 13, 2024.