Scotiabank Giller Prize. Winners. Shortlists.

How Big Deal is the Giller?

The leading Canadian book award carrying a CDN$50,000 prize, an exclusive black-tie gala, and guaranteed bestseller status for the winner, the Giller, carries weight. It is certainly up there with the Nationals, the Pulitzer, and the Book Critics as far as quality is concerned.

The award was founded in 1994 by Montreal real estate businessman Jack Rabinovich as a tribute to his late wife, Doris Giller. The prize goes to the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English, and is announced in October.

Beginning in 2005, the award was co-sponsored by Scotiabank and renamed the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

2008 Longlist

Sept 15th-The longlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, is stocked with familiar faces. Among the 15 nominated authors are three previous winners (David Adams Richards, David Bergen, and Austin Clarke) and two previous nominees (Rawi Hage, Paul Quarrington), as well as other brand-name CanLit authors (Nino Ricci, Joseph Boyden).

The shortlist will be announced on Oct. 7 and the winner named at a gala ceremony on Nov. 11. The winner will take home $50,000, while each other shortlisted author will get $5,000.

The full longlist:

The Lost Highway by David Adams Richards (Doubleday Canada)
The Retreat by David Bergen (McClelland & Stewart)
Through Black Spruce by Joseph Boyden (Viking Canada)
More by Austin Clarke (Thomas Allen Publishers)
Barnacle Love by Anthony De Sa (Doubleday Canada)
The Sealed Letter by Emma Donoghue (HarperCollins Canada)
Good to a Fault by Marina Endicott (Freehand Books)
The Cellist of Sarajevo by Steven Galloway (Knopf Canada)
Cockroach by Rawi Hage (House of Anansi Press)
Blackstrap Hawco by Kenneth J. Harvey (Random House Canada)
Red Dog, Red Dog by Patrick Lane (McClelland & Stewart)
The Withdrawal Method by Pasha Malla (House of Anansi Press)
The Ravine by Paul Quarrington (Random House Canada)
The Origin of Species by Nino Ricci (Doubleday Canada)
The Boys in the Trees by Mary Swan (Henry Holt/H.B. Fenn and Company)

Elizabeth Hay wins lucrative Giller prize for her novel Late Nights on Air

November 7, 2007 - Elizabeth Hay Winner Giller 2007

By: Lee-Anne Goodman, THE CANADIAN PRESS

TORONTO - Elizabeth Hay, a former CBC Radio journalist who long hoped to write a work of fiction about a "golden summer" working in Yellowknife in the 1970s, is the winner of this year's lucrative Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel "Late Nights on Air."

An emotional Hay, 56, picked up the prize Tuesday night in front of a star-studded crowd of about 500 people teeming with movers and shakers from Canada's corporate, broadcasting and political worlds. They included former governor general Adrienne Clarkson, onetime Ontario premier David Peterson, actor Gordon Pinsent and broadcasters Pamela Wallin and Knowlton Nash.

"I am very thrilled and very lucky; so lucky in fact that I'll probably be hit by a truck tomorrow," Hay joked as she accepted the prize. "It's important that I say my thank-yous now."

Hay later said she was surprised to win the Giller, which is worth $40,000 to the winner.

"I thought I had a shot but I actually didn't think I would win it," said Hay, who beat out literary heavyweights Michael Ondaatje and M.G. Vassanji for her tale of love in the North. "It's a self-protective device to just assume that you will not win. But it's such a splendid night, all of the people on the short list wished each other well, we wished each other good luck."

"Late Nights on Air," inspired by Hay's own years working at the public broadcaster in Yellowknife for a decade beginning in 1974, tells the story of a hard-bitten journalist who falls in love with a voice on the radio.

She has said she considered her years working in Yellowknife to be some of the sweetest of her life, adding much of the book was inspired by her time there.

Alice Munro, a Giller winner herself, was visibly delighted by Hay's win, leaping to her feet when her name was announced.

"It's a wonderful book and she's a very good writer," Munro said. "I am so happy for her."

As Hay, her fellow nominees and the revellers celebrated the biggest night of the year for the Canadian publishing industry, booksellers across the country were excited about a party of a different sort: the annual rush of customers always eager to buy the night's winning title.

"There's no question the Giller is absolutely huge - there's no prize that comes even close to comparing," Dave Lawrence, manager of a McNally Robinson bookstore in Winnipeg, said earlier Tuesday.

"It destroys the Governor General's prize. I would say the Booker would be next in line for a prize having such a direct affect on sales."

Along with Hay, four novels were also nominated for this year's prize: Ondaatje's "Divisadero," Vassanji's "The Assassin's Song," Alissa York's "Effigy" and Daniel Poliquin's "A Secret Between Us."

The runners-up receive $2,500 each. The Giller was founded in 1994 by businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller.

Ben McNally, owner of Ben McNally Books in Toronto, said the Giller's influence on sales has become monumental in the 13 years since the prize came into existence.

"Book sales for all the short-listed books are much more robust, and sales for the winner are usually extremely so," McNally said. "And the best thing about the Giller is the way it piques interest in Canadian fiction all year long."

Mike Hamm, the manager of the independent bookstore Bookmark in Halifax, said the days and weeks following the Giller prize are among the busiest of the year for his store.

"Last year, it was a scramble to keep stock of the Vincent Lam book - it was phenomenal," Hamm said

"The minute we hear the nominations, actually, we'll code all the books in our system and beef up the orders because we do have some regular customers who will just buy all five every year. The Giller really brings a lot of attention to Canadian publishing - it's wonderful - and the broadcast generates a lot of buzz. It's a big spotlight on Canadian literature."

The Other Finalists Were........

Michael Ondaatje for his novel Divisadero McClelland & Stewart

Daniel Poliquin for his novel Secret Between Us, trans. Donald Winkler, Douglas & McIntyre

M.G. Vassanji for his novel The Assassin's Song, Doubleday Canada

Alissa York for her novel Effigy, Random House Canada

2007 Giller Longlist

2007 Shortlist- Book Description and Author Details

Elizabeth Hay
Late Nights on Air- Winner
McClelland & Stewart

Harry Boyd, a hard-bitten refugee from failure in Toronto television, has returned to a small radio station in the Canadian North. There, in Yellowknife, in the summer of 1975, he falls in love with a voice on air, though the real woman, Dido Paris, is both a surprise and even more than he imagined. Dido and Harry are part of the cast of eccentric, utterly loveable characters, all transplants from elsewhere, who form an unlikely group at the station. Their loves and longings, their rivalries and entanglements, the stories of their pasts and what brought each of them to the North, form the centre of the novel.

For 10 years Elizabeth Hay worked as a CBC radio broadcaster in Yellowknife, Winnipeg, and Toronto. In 2002 she received the Marian Engel Award for a body of work that includes novels, short fiction, and creative non-fiction. Her first novel A Student of Weather (2000) was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Ottawa Book Award, and the Pearson Canada Reader's Choice Award at The Word on the Street, and winner of the CAA MOSAID Technologies Inc. Award for Fiction and the TORGI Award. Her second novel, Garbo Laughs (2003) won the Ottawa Book Award and was shortlisted for the Governor General's Award. Hay is also the author of Crossing the Snow Line (stories, 1989); The Only Snow in Havana (non-fiction, 1992), which was a co-winner of the Edna Staebler Award for Creative Non-fiction; Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York (non-fiction, 1993), and Small Change (stories, 1997), which was a finalist for the Governor General’s Award, the Trillium Book Award, and the Rogers Communications Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Elizabeth Hay lives in Ottawa, Ontario.

Michael Ondaatje
Divisadero
McClelland & Stewart Michael Ondaatje giller shortlist 2007

In the 1970s in northern California, near Gold Rush country, a father and his teenage daughters, Anna and Claire, work their farm with the help of Coop, an enigmatic young man who makes his home with them. Theirs is a makeshift family, until it is riven by an incident of violence — of both hand and heart — that sets fire to the rest of their lives. The novel takes us from the city of San Francisco to the raucous backrooms of Nevada’s casinos, and eventually to the landscape of south central France. It is here, outside a small rural village, that Anna becomes immersed in the life and the world of a writer from an earlier time — Lucien Segura. His compelling story, which has its beginnings at the turn of the century, circles around “the raw truth” of Anna’s own life, the one she’s left behind but can never truly leave. As the narrative moves back and forth in time and place, we discover each of the characters managing to find some foothold in a present rough-hewn from the past.

Michael Ondaatje’s novels include In the Skin of a Lion, which won the 1988 City of Toronto Book Award and was selected for the first “Canada Reads” edition in 2002; The English Patient, which won the Booker Prize, the Canada Australia Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award, and was later adapted to film and won the Academy Award for Best Picture; and Anil’s Ghost, which won the 2000 Scotiabank Giller Prize, the Prix Medicis, the Kiriyama Pacific Rim Prize, the 2001 Irish Times International Fiction Prize and the Governor General’s Literary Award. His other books include Running in the Family, Coming Through Slaughter, The Cinnamon Peeler, and Handwriting. In 1988 Michael Ondaatje was made an Officer of the Order of Canada and two years later became a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters. Michael Ondaatje lives in Toronto.

Daniel Poliquin
Secret Between Us
Translation by Donald Winkler Daniel Poliquin giller shortlist 2007
Douglas & McIntyre

When young Lusignan sets off from Ottawa to the First World War with the Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, he has already survived a tragicomic Catholic childhood and a writing career that has brought him both acclaim and disgrace. Shortly before the men depart for Europe, Lusignan has an encounter with a fellow officer, the aristocratic Essiambre d’Argenteuil, that proves to be the defining moment of his life. Returning from Europe a hollow man, Lusignan keeps the memory alive by shadowing Amalia Driscoll, a woman whose strait-laced proprieties were challenged by this same d’Argenteuil. He encounters Concorde, the untutored young maid struggling to get by in the Flats district of Ottawa, and the Capuchin monk Father Mathrun, who longs for martyrdom in a foreign land. Providing the backdrop to Poliquin’s incisive character study is a vivid evocation of a pivotal era in Canadian history.

Daniel Poliquin is an accomplished translator and interpreter, and the award-winning author of such works as Temps pascal, L’homme de paille, Visions de Jude, and L’écureuil noir. As a translator, Dr. Poliquin has made such great writers as Jack Kerouac, Mordecai Richler, W.O. Mitchell and others more accessible to Francophone audiences. An ardent promoter of the interests of Franco-Ontarians and other Francophones, Daniel Poliquin is a Chevalier in the Ordre de la Pléiade, and a Member of the Order of Canada.

Donald Winkler was born in Winnipeg in 1940, graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1961, and as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar, did graduate work at the Yale School of Drama. In 1994 he won the Governor General’s Award for French to English translation, and has been a finalist for the Governor General’s Award on two other occasions. A Secret Between Us is Winkler’s translation of Daniel Poliquin’s La Kermesse.

M.G. Vassanji
The Assassin's Song
Doubleday Canada

In The Assassin’s Song, Karsan Dargawalla tells the story of the medieval Sufi shrine of Pirbaag, and his betrayal of its legacy. From the age of eleven, Karsan has been told that one day he will succeed his father as guardian of the Shrine of the Wanderer: as the highest spiritual authority in their region, he will be God’s representative to the multitudes who come to the shrine for penance and worship. But Karsan’s longings are simpler: to play cricket with his friends, to discover more of the exciting world he reads about in the newspapers his friend Raja Singh, a truck driver, brings him from all over India. Half on a whim, Karsan applies to study at Harvard and when he is unexpectedly offered a scholarship there he must try to meld his family’s wishes with his own yearnings. Two years immersed in the intellectual and sexual ferment of America splits him further, until finally Karsan abdicates his succession to the eight hundred-year-old throne. Even as Karsan succeeds in his "ordinary" life – marrying and having a son, becoming a professor in suburban British Columbia – his heritage haunts him in unexpected ways. After tragedy strikes, both in Canada and Pirbaag, he is drawn back across thirty years of silence and separation to discover what, if anything is left for him in India.

M.G. Vassanji was born in Kenya and raised in Tanzania. He holds a Ph.D. in nuclear physics, but chose in 1980 to become a writer. His work has gone on to receive considerable critical acclaim, awards and an international audience. The Gunny Sack won a regional Commonwealth Writers Prize in 1990. In 1994 he won the Harbourfront Festival Prize and was one of 12 Canadians chosen for Maclean's Magazine's Honour Roll. Vassanji won the inaugural Giller Prize in 1994 for The Book of Secrets and was the first writer to win the Scotiabank Giller Prize a second time in 2003 for The In-Between World of Vikram Lall. In 2006, When She Was Queen was shortlisted for the City of Toronto Book Award. M.G. Vassanji is a Member of the Order of Canada. He lives in Toronto.

Alissa York Allissa York Giller shortlist 2007
Effigy
Random House Canada

Dorrie, a shock-pale child with a mass of untameable black hair, cannot recall anything of her life before she recovered from an illness at seven. A solitary child, she spends her spare time learning the art of taxidermy, completely fascinated by the act of bringing new and eternal life to the bodies of the dead. At 14, her parents marry her off to Erastus Hammer, a polygamous horse breeder and renowned hunter, who does not want to bed her but instead wants her to create trophies of his most impressive kills, as he is slowly going blind. Happy to be given this work, Dorrie secludes herself in her workshop, away from Mother Hammer’s watchful eyes and the rivalry between the elder wives. But as the novel opens, Hammer has brought Dorrie his latest kills, a family of wolves, and for the first time in her short life she struggles with her craft, dreaming each night of crows and strange scenes of violence. The new hand, Bendy Drown, is the only one to see her dilemma and to offer her help, a dangerous game in a Mormon household. Outside, a lone wolf prowls the grounds looking for his lost pack, and his night time searching will unearth the tensions and secrets of this complicated and conflicted family.

Alissa York’s highly acclaimed first novel, Mercy, was published in 2003. She won the Mary Scorer Award for Best Book by a Manitoba writer for her short story collection, Any Given Power. Her stories have also won the Journey Prize and the Bronwen Wallace Award, and in 2001 she won the John Hirsch Award for Most Promising Manitoba Writer. Alissa York lives in Toronto.

Previous Giller Prize Winners 1994-2006

2006 WINNER
Vincent Lam for Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures

Shortlist
Rawi Hage for De Niro’s Game
House of Anansi Press

Vincent Lam for Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures
Doubleday Canada

Pascale Quiviger for The Perfect Circle, translation by Sheila Fischman
Cormorant Books

Gaétan Soucy for The Immaculate Conception, translation by Lazer Lederhendler
House of Anansi Press

Carol Windley for Home Schooling
Cormorant Books

Jury Panel
Adrienne Clarkson
Alice Munro
Michael Winter

2005 WINNER
David Bergen for The Time In Between

Shortlist
Joan Barfoot for Luck
Knopf Canada

David Bergen for The Time In Between
McClelland & Stewart

Camilla Gibb for Sweetness In The Belly
Doubleday Canada

Lisa Moore for Alligator
House of Anansi Press

Edeet Ravel for A Wall of Light
Random House Canada

Jury Panel
Warren Cariou
Elizabeth Hay
Richard B. Wrighti

2004 WINNER
Alice Munro for Runaway

Shortlist
Shauna Singh Baldwin for The Tiger Claw
Knopf Canada

Wayson Choy for All That Matters
Doubleday Canada

Pauline Holdstock for Beyond Measure
Cormorant Books

Alice Munro for Runaway
McClelland & Stewart / Douglas Gibson Books

Paul Quarrington for Galveston
Random House Canada

Miriam Toews for A Complicated Kindness
Knopf Canada

Jury Panel
Charlotte Gray
Alistair MacLeod
M.G. Vassanji

2003 WINNER
M.G. Vassanji for The In-Between World of Vikram Lall

Shortlist
Margaret Atwood for Oryx and Crake
McClelland & Stewart

John Bemrose for The Island Walkers
McClelland & Stewart

John Gould for Kilter: 55 Fictions
Turnstone Press

Ann-Marie MacDonald for The Way the Crow Flies
Knopf Canada

M.G. Vassanji for The In-Between World of Vikram Lall
Doubleday Canada

Jury Panel
Rosalie Silberman Abella
David Staines
Rudy Wieb

2002 WINNER
Austin Clarke for The Polished Hoe

Shortlist
Austin Clarke for The Polished Hoe
Thomas Allen Publishers

Bill Gaston for Mount Appetite
Raincoast Books

Wayne Johnston for The Navigator of New York
Alfred A. Knopf Canada

Lisa Moore for Open
House of Anansi Press

Carol Shields for Unless
Random House Canada

Jury Panel
Barbara Gowdy
Thomas King
Bill New

2001 Winner
Richard B. Wright for Clara Callan

Shortlist
Sandra Birdsell for The Russlander
McClelland & Stewart

Michael Crummey for River Thieves
Doubleday Canada

Michael Redhill for Martin Sloane
Doubleday Canada

Timothy Taylor for Stanley Park
Alfred A. Knopf Canada

Jane Urquhart for The Stone Carvers
McClelland & Stewart

Richard B. Wright for Clara Callan
HarperFlamingoCanada

Jury Panel
David Adams Richards
Joan Clark
Robert Fulford

2000 Winners
David Adams Richards for Mercy Among The Children
Michael Ondaatje for Anil's Ghost

Shortlist
Alan Cumyn for Burridge Unbound
McClelland & Stewart

David Adams Richards for Mercy Among The Children
Doubleday Canada

Elizabeth Hay for A Student of Weather
McClelland & Stewart

Michael Ondaatje for Anil's Ghost
McClelland & Stewart

Eden Robinson for Monkey Beach
Alfred A. Knopf Canada

Fred Stenson for The Trade
Douglas & McIntyre

Jury Panel
Margaret Atwood
Alistair MacLeod
Jane Urquhart

1999 Winner
Bonnie Burnard for A Good House

Shortlist
Bonnie Burnard for A Good House
HarperFlamingoCanada

Timothy Findley for Pilgrim
HarperFlamingoCanada

Anne Hébert for Am I Disturbing You
House of Anasi Press

Nancy Huston for The Mark of the Angel
McArthur & Company

David MacFarlane for Summer Gone
Alfred A. Knopf Canada

Jury Panel
Alberto Manguel
Judith Mappin
Nino Ricci

1998 Winner
Alice Munro for The Love of a Good Woman

Shortlist
Andre Alexis for Childhood
McClelland & Stewart

Gail Anderson-Dargatz for A Recipe for Bees
Alfred A. Knopf Canada

Barbara Gowdy for The White Bone
HarperFlamingoCanada

Greg Hollingshead for The Healer
HarperFlamingoCanada / A Phyllis Bruce Book

Wayne Johnston for The Colony of Unrequited Dreams
Alfred A. Knopf Canada

Alice Munro for The Love of a Good Woman
McClelland & Stewart / A Douglas Gibson Book

Jury Panel
Margaret Atwood
Guy Vanderhaeghe
Peter Gzowski

1997 Winner
Mordecai Richler for Barney's Version

Shortlist
Michael Helm for The Projectionist
Douglas & McIntyre

Shani Mootoo for Cereus Blooms at Night
Press Gang Publishers

Nino Ricci for Where She Has Gone
McClelland & Stewart

Mordecai Richler for Barney's Version
Alfred A. Knopf Canada

Carol Shields for Larry's Party
Random House of Canada

Jury Panel
Bonnie Burnard
Mavis Gallant
Peter Gzowski

1996 Winner
Margaret Atwood for Alias Grace

Shortlist
Gail Anderson-Dargatz for The Cure for Death by Lightning
Knopf Canada

Margaret Atwood for Alias Grace
Doubleday Canada

Ann-Marie MacDonald for Fall on Your Knees
Simon & Schuster

Anne Michaels for Fugitive Pieces
Thorndike

Guy Vanderhaeghe for The Englishman's Boy
McClelland & Stewart

Jury
Bonnie Burnard
Carol Shields
David Staines

1995 Winner
Rohinton Mistry for A Fine Balance

Shortlist
Timothy Findley for The Piano Man's Daughter
HarperCollins

Barbara Gowdy for Mister Sandman
Somerville House

Leo McKay Jr. for Like This
House of Anansi

Rohinton Mistry for A Fine Balance
McClelland & Stewart

Richard B. Wright for The Age of Longing
HarperCollins

Jury
Mordecai Richler
David Staines
Jane Urquhart

1994 Winner
M.G. Vassanji for The Book of Secrets

Shortlist
Bonnie Burnard for Casino and Other Stories
HarperCollins

Eliza Clark for What You Need
Somerville House

Shyam Selvadurai for Funny Boy
McClelland & Stewart

M.G. Vassanji for The Book of Secrets
McClelland & Stewart

Steve Weiner for The Museum of Love
Penguin Books Canada

Jury
Alice Munro
Mordecai Richler
David Staines