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
September 2018
Lee Maracle’s Conversations with Canadians (2017)
It’s such a perfect way to begin the book, inviting readers to imagine sitting at a kitchen table with Sto:lo author, Lee Maracle. And
August 2018
Into September 2018, In My Notebook: The NitGrit of CanLit
I've worked in a bookstore twice in my life. Between those jobs, the Giller Prize burst onto the Canadian literary scene, in 1994.
Reading for #WomenInTranslation Month
What a fine author with whom to launch Women in Translation month (hosted by Biblibio) one of the few contemporary authors whose work I have
December 2017
December 2017, In My Notebook
This season, I took a break from my reading projects and played with the longlists for some of the Canadian literary prizes. Before I'd quite
Page Turners: Thieves, Bombs, Predators, Gunshots, and Oil Spills
In which pages are turned, at a faster rate than usual. Character-soaked, but still fast-paced storytelling. Cherie Dimaline's The Marrow Thieves (2017) is set in a
November 2017
Andrée A. Michaud’s Boundary (2014; 2017)
Boundaries and borders, between countries and between stages of life: Andrée A. Michaud's Boundary darts across the dotted lines, back and forth, sedately in
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.