Toronto Star short story contest winner Nina Dragicevic signs two-book publishing deal

Two-time winner of the Toronto Star short story contest Nina Dragicevic signed a deal on Friday to publish her first two books.

The Scarborough-based author first won the Star’s contest in 2017 and picked up her second win April 19. Less than twelve hours later, Dragicevic’s agent told her a publisher was interested in acquiring her debut novel “The Clarion” and an anthology of her short stories.

“To sign with a publisher, that’s the dream,” Dragicevic said.

“I didn’t even aspire to be an author, and now I’m going to be a two-book author right off the bat. It doesn’t get any better than that.”

Dragicevic, a freelance journalist and fiction writer who publishes under the name Nina Dunic, said she was “in a bit of a slump” five years ago. She initially tried creative writing in 2017 as a New Year’s resolution

“I had no dreams of being an author. I didn’t even dare to dream that.”

Her short story “Cardinal” won the short story contest that year. The win earned Dragicevic $5,000 and tuition for a 30-week Humber College creative writing program

That put Dragicevic in correspondence with Canadian writer John Metcalf. During their time in the program, Dragicevic said she wrote around seven short stories.

In 2018 Dragicevic hired Akin Akinwumi at Willenfield Literary Agency as her agent. She said Akinwumi encouraged her to try to write her first novel.

Dragicevic said after one year writing the novel and one year editing she completed her first manuscript, “The Clarion.” Her agent started sending publishers the manuscript in February.

That’s how “The Clarion” ended up with Norman Nehmetallah less than two weeks after he became publisher at Invisible Publishing. Nehmetallah said Dragicevic’s novel first caught his eye on Monday.

“I knew within the first 20 pages that it was the kind of book that I was interested in publishing,” Nehmetallah said.

And when Dragicevic’s story “Youth” earned her a second short story contest win on Tuesday, Nehmetallah said he knew he needed to act quickly. He offered Dragicevic a two-book deal.

“I imagined that there would be more publishers interested at this point, so I acted fast and I feel pretty good about that,” Nehmetallah said.

“The Clarion” will be the first book Dragicevic has published. The novel will also be the first published and acquired by Nehmetallah.

Nehmetallah said the novel is scheduled for release in fall 2023 and Dragicevic’s collection of short stories is slated for 2025.

With the contest prize, Dragicevic said she would return to Humber College’s mentorship program.

“I’ll have a published author and somebody very experienced look at all my short fiction and polish it up with me,” Dragicevic said.

“I’m hoping that the short fiction collection will come out and will just be absolutely pristine.”

The author added she could not articulate how excited she was to publish a novel.

“I don’t even know how to describe how I feel,” Dragicevic said.

“Like I said before, this is the dream. That’s it.”

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