Results tagged “davidbergen”

Well, it's official. This year's Giller Prize has been awarded to Elizabeth Hay for her novel, Late Nights on Air.

Monday morning, amidst a first-rate buffet of coffee, chocolate chip cookies, and fresh orange juice at the Four Seasons Hotel, a disheveled group of journalists and bankers gathered to hear the shortlist announced for the 14th annual Scotiabank Giller Prize. Only the second year that the final contenders were culled from an initial longlist of 15 books, this annum the task fell to the jury of staunch decipherers David Bergen, Camilla Gibb and Lorna Goodison. All three affected a slightly bemused expressions when founder Jack Rabinovitch reminded them of the fact in his opening statements, presumably as the memory of tackling so many novels in just under a month physically caught up with them. Cookies and coffee indeed: it’s a miracle they could even read their entries out at the podium.

An overflowing pile of books by paolo_dlk from the Torontoist Flickr Pool.

If you’d like weekly emails full of Toronto literary listings, sign up at Patchy Squirrel, a new offering from Stuart Ross and Dani Couture. Stuart launches a new collection of poetry, I Cut My Finger (Anvil Press) with Kate Sutherland's All In Together Girls (fiction from Thistledown Press) Sunday, April 22, 8 p.m. at Clintons Tavern (back room), 693 Bloor West.

) short-story wunderkind was shut out of the hometown prize last year but went on to get nods elsewhere, winning pretty much every other literary award around, including the most recent Toronto Book Award. Since both authors happen to be relative outsiders in the small-ish Canadian publishing community, it begs the question, Could the Gillers be one big popularity contest, like a grown-up junior high? Say it ain’t so, Jack.