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
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
March 2024
Five Canadian Books: #CanadaReads 2024
This morning, the 23rd edition of Canada Reads program launches. I’ve missed the voice of a career writer in the program in recent years
December 2022
Here and Elsewhere Reading in 2022
On the day that I got my visitor’s card at the library here, I borrowed Marie-Louise Gay’s Mustafa (2018): a children’s story (Gay illustrates,
November 2021
Margaret Atwood Reading Month: #MARM Week Three, 2021
Today, Margaret Atwood turns 82. For those who wish to celebrate her birthday, consider adding a candle to your favourite treat, and watching this
October 2019
Shadow Giller: Ian Williams’ Reproduction (2019)
Ian Williams landed in my stack with his longlisting for the ReLit Award in 2011. This is why I read prizelists: they encourage me
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.