UNO News Net: Esi Edugyan, Patrick deWitt among finalists for $100,000 Giller Prize

Canadian novelist Esi Edugyan is a finalist for the 2018 Giller Prize for her novel Washington Black

Mon., Oct. 1, 2018

Surprise filled the room as the finalists were announced for the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize for fiction in Toronto on Monday.
The five authors who will now be considered for the $100,000 award were chosen from a very strong long list of nominees that included veteran writers Rawi Hage, Lisa Moore and Kim Thuy, and powerful debuts by Tanya Tagaq and Joshua Whitehead.

Yet none of those names made the top five.
Patrick deWitt for his novel French Exit (House of Anansi) was the first of the five to be announced, in alphabetical order. DeWitt was a finalist in 2011 for The Sisters Brothers, which became a movie that just had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival; he was also longlisted in 2015 for Undermajordomo Minor.
Eric Dupont is up for his novel Songs for the Cold of Heart, translated by Peter McCambridge (QC Fiction, an imprint of Baraka Books).

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Esi Edugyan is nominated for Washington Black (Patrick Crean Editions). Edugyan won the prize in 2011 — when it was still worth $50,000 — for Half-Blood Blues. Her new book was called “a cinematic epic of slavery and freedom.”
Edugyan and this book have also been nominated for the Man Booker Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.
“It confirms her talent and her international reach, so it’s a very exciting moment,” said Patrick Crean, the editor and publisher of the book. When her name was announced he high-fived those around him. He also published her Giller-winning Half-Blood Blues.
Sheila Heti’s Motherhood (Knopf Canada) is also on the short list. Her How Should a Person Be?, as well as other projects, have made her a well-known and popular thinker; this is her first Giller appearance.
Thea Lim is nominated for An Ocean of Minutes (Viking Canada). This is her second book, having published The Same Woman in 2007.

The five nominees were whittled down from the 12-person long list by this year’s jury: Canadian writer and journalist Kamal Al-Solaylee (the jury chair); playwright Maxine Bailey, who is vice-president of advancement for the Toronto International Film Festival; American writer John Freeman; English novelist Philip Hensher and Canadian author Heather O’Neill.
“We had different opinions and different books spoke to us more than others,” laughed Al-Solaylee in conversation after the announcement. “Ultimately there was an element of, ‘You convinced me.’ I pushed for a couple of books, but you cannot push for your favourite six or seven.

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“I’m very happy with both the long and short list. They really reflect what the jury felt and the conversations we had over seven months.”
The jury chose the list from 104 books submitted by publishers across the country. The jury can also call in books that haven’t been submitted to ensure that books they think are worthy at least of consideration aren’t overlooked. This didn’t account for some surprises on the long list this year, including the absence of Miriam Toews’ latest book, Women Talking.
One person you may not know but who often has books on the Giller short list is Lynn Henry, the editor of Sheila Heti’s novel Motherhood. She also edited Madeleine Thien’s Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which won the Giller and was also nominated for the Booker prize.
This year marks the 25th anniversary of the Giller Prize. While its intent is still to honour the best in Canadian fiction, it has also seen major changes in the last few years. Its founder, Jack Rabinovitch, died in August 2017 after a “catastrophic” fall at the age of 87. He created the prize in 1994 to honour his wife, Doris Giller, a former books editor at the Toronto Star, who died in 1993.
Whenever he spoke at the Gillers, Rabinovitch would say: “For the price of a dinner in this town you can buy all the nominated books. So eat at home and buy the books.”
“It’s only the second year Jack hasn’t been here so it’s still pretty raw, in a way, because I know how much he loved this event and celebrating the authors,” said his daughter Elana Rabinovitch, the prize’s executive director.
Together they had plans for “bigging it up,” including taking the Giller authors on the road; last year to London, England, and this year to New York. Jack Rabinovitch was around, too, to witness a bigger involvement by corporate sponsor Scotiabank, which doubled the prize pot in 2014. The winner now receives $100,000; each finalist $10,000.
Besides the cash prize, the winner receives a two-week, self-directed residency at the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity.
The winner of the 2018 Scotiabank Giller Prize will be announced at a gala celebration in Toronto on Monday, Nov. 19.
Deborah Dundas is the Star’s Books editor. She is based in Toronto. Follow her on Twitter: debdundas