David Chariandry’s Brother (M&S)
Rachel Cusk’s Transit (HarperCollins)
David Denchuk’s The Bone Mother (ChiZine)
Joel Thomas Hynes We’ll All Be Burnt in Our Beds Some Night (HarperCollins)
Andrée A. Michaud’s Boundary: The Last Summer (Trans. Donald Winkler) (Biblioasis)
Josip Novakovich’s Tumbleweed (Véhicule)
Ed O’Loughlin’s Minds of Winter (Anansi)
Zoey Leigh Peterson’s Next Year for Sure (Doubleday)
Michael Redhill’s Bellevue Square (Doubleday)
Eden Robinson’s Son of a Trickster (Knopf)
Deborah Willis’ The Dark and Other Love Stories (Hamish Hamilton)
Michelle Winters’ I Am a Truck (Invisible)
The 2017 Giller jury (André Alexis, Anita Rau Badami, Richard Beard, Lynn Coady and Nathan Englander) has selected twelve books, including short stories and fresh voices, unconventional styles and a work in translation, even a horror novel!
Altough the shortlist will be announced on October 2nd, before I will have had a chance to read through the list, I plan to read the longlist anyhow. If I manage to finish reading before the winner is announced on November 20th, I will privately offer it a lovely rose.
A rose from a reader.
Reading the 2017 Giller Prize Longlist
Guessing at each book’s Giller-a-bility
The last time the Giller longlist so tickled me was 2011. Back then, the jury (Howard Norman, Annabel Lyon and Andrew O’Hagan) introduced me to Michael Christie, Patrick deWitt and Alexi Zentner, and urged me to read – finally – Clark Blaise, Esi Edugyan, Pauline Holdstock, Dany Laferriere and Guy Vanderhaeghe.
Recent Prizelist and Event Reading
February 2025
Read Indies 2025: A Novella and an Epic, Mysteries and Verses, Matasha and a Manifesto
Kaggsy’s and Lizzy’s fifth annual celebration of Indie publishers in the UK is a regular reminder to celebrate the independent voices in this industry.
Read Indies 2025: Letters, Translations, Limbs and a Goat
Kaggsy’s and Lizzy’s fifth annual celebration of Indie publishers in the UK is a regular reminder to celebrate the independent voices in this industry.
Read Indies 2025: Six Books, Six Reading Moods
Kaggsy’s and Lizzy’s fifth annual celebration of Indie publishers in the UK is a regular reminder to celebrate the independent voices in this industry.
January 2025
Community Reading in 2024
Midway through 2024, I enthused about Casey Plett’s On Community which includes a discussion of how Plett often feels the term is too slippery
October 2024
The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction 2024
The Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction lodged in my mind because I really loved its inaugural winner: Kadija Abdalla Bajaber’s The House
August 2024
The Carol Shields Prize for Fiction (3 of 4)
Rebecca and Laura have been reading and writing about books on the Carol Shields Fiction Prize too: Rebecca (Loot, The Future and Chrysalis, Cocktail
Even when I didn’t live in Toronto, I still watched this prizelist for books set in the city that I hoped to call home someday.
The International Festival of Authors brought me to Toronto many times before I actually moved to the city. It remains a favourite!
The ReLit Awards peer more closely at the books that are sometimes overlooked, those from smaller and independent presses.