title: Sheena Kamal
text: # Sheena Kamal
  
  Sheena Kamal is a Canadian novelist. Her works include thrillers and young adult fiction.
  
  ## Early life and education
  
  Kamal moved to Canada from Trinidad at age 6. She received a degree in political science from the University of Toronto and worked in the film industry before beginning a career as a novelist.
  
  ## Writing
  
  ### Nora Watts series
  
  As of September 2020, Kamal has published three novels that centre on Nora Watts: The Lost Ones (2017), It All Falls Down (2018), and No Going Back (2020). Watts, a crime investigator, is half-Indigenous and half-Palestinian and lives in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.
  
  The Lost Ones (2017) is a thriller set in Vancouver. Kamal developed the concept for the novel while working as a staffer on Shoot the Messenger.
  
  Roxane Gay praised The Lost Ones on her Goodreads account and Jael Richardson selected it as a recommended title on CBC Radio's q books programme. The novel won 2018's Macavity Award for best first novel and the Kobo Emerging Writer Prize for Mystery.
  
  ### Fight Like a Girl
  
  Kamal's first book for young readers is Fight Like a Girl (2020). The novel centres on Trisha, a teenager who practises Muay Thai, whose father dies in a car accident. Novelist Jennifer Hillier recommended the work in Ms., noting that "I would buy this book based on the title alone".
  
  ## Personal life
  
  Like the main character of Fight Like a Girl, Kamal practises Muay Thai.
  
  ## Works
  
  * Kamal, Sheena (2017). The Lost Ones. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-256576-1. OCLC 995161969.
  * Kamal, Sheena (2018). It All Falls Down. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-256577-8. OCLC 1041940269.
  * Kamal, Sheena (2020). No Going Back. HarperCollins. ISBN 978-0-06-286978-4. OCLC 1150884557.
  * Kamal, Sheena (2020). Fight Like a Girl. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-7352-6556-1. OCLC 1107700313.
  