On May 4, the winner of the inaugural US$150,000 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction, which celebrates the work of Canadian and American women and non-binary writers, will be announced. In honour of the prize, Writers & Company is airing Eleanor Wachtel's last conversation with Shields, recorded at her home in Victoria in 2002. Shields died the following year. She was the author of more than 20 books including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Stone Diaries, The Republic of Love and Swann: A Mystery. Her last novel, Unless, tells the story of a writer struggling with the loss of her daughter, who's chosen to live on a downtown street corner with a cardboard sign fixed to her that reads "Goodness." *This episode originally aired on July 17, 2003.