The 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize Announces Its Shortlist

October 4, 2011

Today, in a morning press conference that drew over 100 media and members of the publishing industry, the Scotiabank Giller Prize announced its 2011 shortlist. The six finalists were selected by an esteemed jury panel made up of award-winning Canadian writer and 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize finalist Annabel Lyon; American author, memoirist and Guggenheim fellow Howard Norman; and acclaimed UK playwright and prize-winning novelist Andrew O’Hagan.

This is the 18th year of the prize.

The shortlist was winnowed down from an unprecedented longlist of 17 books. The original field of submissions was a record-breaking 143 titles put forward by 55 publishing houses from every region of the country.

The 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists are:

Hosting this morning’s press conference was CBC Television’s award-winning investigative journalist and 2009 Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Linden MacIntyre. Jack Rabinovitch, founder of the Giller Prize, spoke at the event as did Duncan Hannay, Scotiabank Senior Vice-President, Canadian Marketing, as well as Kirstine Stewart, Executive Vice President CBC English Services.

Jian Ghomeshi, host of CBC’s arts and culture program Q, will preside over the Scotiabank Giller Prize gala on November 8th at the Four Seasons Hotel in downtown Toronto where a winner will be announced. The gala will air live on CBC’s Bold TV at 9:00 p.m. ET and will be rebroadcast at 11:00 p.m. on CBC Television. It will also be live-streamed on CBC Books with a concurrent live chat.

CBC Books launched a new contest with today's announcement of the Scotiabank Giller Prize shortlist. Canadians are invited to "Guess the Giller" for a chance to win a visit from the author who takes home the prize on November 8.

International Festival of Authors (IFOA), Harbourfront Centre

For the eighth year in a row, the Scotiabank Giller Prize finalists will read from their nominated books at IFOA’s Closing Night on Saturday, October 29 at 8:00 p.m.

The Scotiabank Giller Light

Celebrating its 10th anniversary, Frontier College will host the Scotiabank Giller Light Bash – the alternative Giller party of the year on the same evening as the Scotiabank Giller Prize. This year’s event takes place at The Burroughs in Toronto, with similar events in Winnipeg, Calgary and Vancouver. The Scotiabank Giller Light has raised over $265,000 for Frontier College, Canada’s original literacy organization. For more information and tickets, please go to www.gillerlightbash.ca.

Scotiabank

Scotiabank is committed to supporting the communities in which we live and work, both in Canada and abroad, through our global philanthropic program, ‘Bright Future’. Recognized as a leader internationally and among Canadian corporations for our charitable donations and philanthropic activities, Scotiabank has provided on average approximately $44 million annually to community causes around the world over each of the last five years. Visit us at www.scotiabank.com.

About CBC/Radio-Canada

CBC/Radio-Canada is Canada's national public broadcaster and one of its largest cultural institutions. The Corporation is a leader in reaching Canadians on new platforms and delivers a comprehensive range of radio, television, Internet, and satellite-based services. Deeply rooted in the regions, CBC/Radio-Canada is the only domestic broadcaster to offer diverse regional and cultural perspectives in English, French and eight Aboriginal languages, plus seven languages for international audiences. In 2011, CBC/Radio-Canada is celebrating 75 years of serving Canadians and being at the centre of the democratic, social and cultural life of Canada.

About CBC Books

CBC Books features all of CBC’s rich literary content across all platforms - audio, video and digital. This one-stop destination for book lovers includes in-depth information on books, exclusive interviews with authors, the latest news stories from the publishing world, book reviews, best-seller lists, discussions and blogs. It’s an online meeting place where literary enthusiasts can find the books they want to read, connect with other Canadians who love to read as much as they do, and keep up on all of CBC’s major literary events and programs such as Canada Reads, the Massey Lectures and Canada Writes.

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The Scotiabank Giller Prize awards $50,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English and $5,000 to each of the finalists. The Scotiabank Giller Prize is named in honour of the late literary journalist Doris Giller and was founded in 1994 by her husband Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch.
Please visit us at:

www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca
www.twitter.com/gillerprize
www.facebook.com/gillerprize

About the 2011 Scotiabank Giller Prize Finalists

David Bezmozgis

THE FREE WORLD
HarperCollins Publishers Ltd

Jury Citation
“This chronicle of the Krasnansky family, Soviet-Jewish refugees are stranded in Rome, has the strange immediacy of a family album where the photographs light up and start talking. The narrative is so often pulled backward in time, it evokes Sholom Aleichem’s proverb that "In Jewish thought eternity resides in the past." But The Free World is also a very modern, very hip, intellectually intimate, electrically comic novel, all the while a passionate re-telling of the most ancient sort of immigrant story, full of vicissitudes, nerve-wracking doubt and unforeseen joys. David Bezmozgis has done the near impossible - given us a story with pointillist detail as well as historically operatic dimensions. A truly magical writer.”

Biography
David Bezmozgis was born in Riga, Latvia, in 1973. In 1980 he immigrated with his parents to Toronto. He received an Honours Bachelor of Arts in English Literature from McGill University and a Master of Fine Arts from the University of Southern California School of Cinema-Television. His writing has appeared in magazines such as Harper’s, The New Yorker and The Walrus, and has been anthologized in Best American Short Stories, 2005. Natasha became a national bestseller and was published to widespread critical acclaim. David Bezmozgis lives in Toronto.

Lynn Coady

THE ANTAGONIST
House of Anansi Press

Jury Citation
“Lynn Coady's novel The Antagonist is perfectly titled. Its main character, Rank, is hassled, cajoled and bullied by his hockey coach, classmates and most relentlessly by his own outlandish lout of a father into becoming a nearly twisted psychopath. Yet deep down he's nothing of the sort. In middle age, Rank discovers a secret novel written by his university friend Adam, in which he is harshly depicted. Rank becomes a cyber-stalker, trying to correct in emails all wrongful indictments set forth in the novel. This zany epistolary life comprises one of the most eccentric and memorable autobiographies you're likely to read. In this antagonistic tour-de-force, Ms. Coady shows us betrayal up close and personal. This author is a virtuoso of sympathetic edginess.”

Biography
Lynn Coady is an award-winning author, editor, and journalist. Her previous novels include Saints of Big Harbour, which was a national bestseller and a Globe and Mail Top 100 book, and Mean Boy, a Globe and Mail Top 100 book. Her popular advice column, Group Therapy, runs weekly in the Globe and Mail. Coady is originally from Cape Breton Island, NS, and is now living in Edmonton, Alberta.

Patrick deWitt

THE SISTERS BROTHERS
House of Anansi Press

Jury Citation
"If you fear that Canadian literary fiction is becoming mortally po-faced, Patrick deWitt's The Sisters Brothers might be the perfect antidote. Combine equal parts slapstick brutality, howling humour, and prose grace; slug it back neat, brush your teeth for the first time ever with the bemused wonder of a hired assassin on a half-blind horse; and repeat. DeWitt has thrown the Western up in the air and brought it down new and strange and ferociously alive."

Biography
Patrick deWitt was born on Vancouver Island in 1975. He is the author of the critically acclaimed novel Ablutions, which was named a New York Times Editors' Choice book. He lives in Portland, Oregon, with his wife and son.

Esi Edugyan

HALF-BLOOD BLUES
Thomas Allen Publishers

Jury Citation
"Imagine Mozart were a black German trumpet player and Salieri a bassist, and 18th century Vienna were WWII Paris; that's Esi Edugyan's joyful lament, Half-Blood Blues. It's conventional to liken the prose in novels about jazz to the music itself, as though there could be no higher praise. In this case, say rather that any jazz musician would be happy to play the way Edugyan writes. Her style is deceptively conversational and easy, but with the simultaneous exuberance and discipline of a true prodigy. Put this book next to Louis Armstrong's "West End Blues" – these two works of art belong together."

Biography
Esi Edugyan has degrees from the University of Victoria and Johns Hopkins University. Her work has appeared in several anthologies, including Best New American Voices 2003. Her debut novel, The Second Life of Samuel Tyne was published internationally to critical acclaim. She lives in Victoria, British Columbia.

Zsuzsi Gartner

BETTER LIVING THROUGH PLASTIC EXPLOSIVES
Hamish Hamilton Canada

Jury Citation
“Readers who doubt the modern world is grotesque and hilarious, heart-stopping and wild, may discover they are delighted with Zsuzsi Gartner’s wonderful collection of stories, Better Living Through Plastic Explosives. From the specifications of covetable stereo equipment to the worries of the former terrorist, from the language of IKEA to gardening as warfare, this book shows the short story form at its savage best, each story capturing, with brilliant economy and grace, not only entire worlds but whole mindsets as they explode into eloquence. Gartner is one of the supreme noticers in contemporary fiction, and with this book she has produced a rare work of wisdom and laughter.”

Biography
Zsuzsi Gartner is the author of the short fiction collections Better Living Through Plastic Explosives and All the Anxious Girls on Earth, the editor of Darwin’s Bastards: Astounding Tales from Tomorrow, and the creative director of Vancouver Review’s Blueprint BC Fiction Series. Her stories have been widely anthologized, and broadcast on CBC and NPR’s Selected Shorts. Zsuzsi is a long-time contributing reviewer for The Globe & Mail, and has appeared on CBC’s Canada Reads. A former senior editor at the now-defunct Saturday Night, she has received numerous nominations and awards for her magazine journalism, and a 2005 National Magazine Award for fiction. She has been on faculty for the Banff Centre’s Literary Arts Programs and is an adjunct faculty member for UBC’s Optional Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Zsuzsi lives in Vancouver.

Michael Ondaatje

A CAT’S TABLE
McClelland & Stewart

Jury Citation
“A beautiful mingling of memory and imagination takes place in Michael Ondaatje’s novel The Cat’s Table. It is the early 1950s, and a passenger ship, the Oronsay, makes its way to England over the Indian Ocean and the Arabian Sea, through the Suez Canal and the Mediterranean. On board is our 11-year-old narrator Michael, who eats his meals at the unglamorous cat’s table, where he joins a group of boys and adult eccentrics, all of whom have stories to tell and lives to live, or live down. The journey will change them all in ways that only time will tell. A mature, shimmering work of fiction, Ondaatje’s novel is rich in images, precise in its language, and wise about the way people can be haunted by their own experience.”

Biography
Michael Ondaatje is the author of Coming Through Slaughter, In the Skin of a Lion, The English Patient, Anil's Ghost and Divisadero. His poetry books include The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, The Cinnamon Peeler and Handwriting. He has written a memoir, Running in the Family and The Conversations, a non-fiction book about film editing. Previously an editor at Coach House Books in Toronto, he is at present one of the editors of the literary magazine Brick.