Results tagged “scotiabankgillerprize”

Joseph Boyden has won the Giller Prize—you know, "Canada's Premier Prize for Fiction"!—for Through Black Spruce, a novel that this year's jury of Margaret Atwood, Bob Rae, and Colm Toibin praised for "show[ing] us unforgettable characters and a northern landscape in a way we have never seen them before." (It's a bit of a surprise pick: Mary Swan’s The Boys in the Trees was the "overwhelming" winner of the Guess The Giller contest, according to their press release earlier in the day.) The Globe, Post, Star, and CTV all have more details from the gala.

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.

Photo by EIFF.

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

A big congratulations goes out to Toronto-based press House of Anansi for publishing this year’s ReLit short story winner, Bill Gaston’s Gargoyles. The ReLit award is set up to give well deserved attention to books produced by the independent presses throughout Canada. House of Anansi’s winning entry is joined a number of its other publications on the poetry and novel short list. (Also nominated for the long list was Torontoist’s very own Sharon Harris for her wonderful book Avatar.)

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.

Award-winning Toronto author (and emergency physician) Vincent Lam will give his first public reading since winning the Scotiabank Giller Prize this Wednesday as Diaspora Dialogues teams up with the Harbourfront Centre’s International Reading series.

If film buffs get the TIFF, art buffs get the Queen West Art Crawl, and hockey buffs get the NHL playoffs, then literary types get the IFOA. This year's fest packs in dozens of authors and into 10 days worth of readings, panel discussions, interviews and parties. Yes, once in a while literary types put down their books and drink.

) 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.