Five Canadian authors are first-time Giller finalists competing for the $100,000 prize, with the winner to be announced Nov. 16 at a gala in Toronto.
The Story
Five Canadian writers have been named first-time finalists for the Giller Prize, which awards $100,000 to the author of the best Canadian novel, graphic novel or short story collection published in English this year.
For the first time, the prize will be decided by a jury of nine independent booksellers from across Canada, with the winner scheduled to be announced at a gala hosted by Rick Mercer on Nov. 16 at the Ritz-Carlton in Toronto.
Michelle Good is a finalist for “Eliza Sunshine,” which follows three generations of Cree women connected by a family tradition of storytelling. Good has said the novel is “very personal” and is based on her mother and great-grandmother’s life, while describing it as fiction that includes “aspects that are ‘actually factual.’” She was previously longlisted for the Giller for her 2020 novel “Five Little Indians.”
Nicholas Herring is nominated for “Your Breath in Charcoal,” about a directionless young Islander who picks up an acquaintance’s brother from a mental health hospital in New Brunswick before the pair travel further west to Toronto. It is Herring’s second novel after “Some Hellish” (2022), which won the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. Herring, who works as a carpenter in Prince Edward Island, described his writing voice as “working-class” and “philosophical,” and said he was “just trying to tackle big issues” such as fear and love.
Nazanine Hozar is in the running for “The Small Ones,” a novel set along the Iran-Iraq border that follows children caught up in a military insurgence in the early 1980s. Hozar said the work is based on real conflict from that period, and that “The Small Ones” is her second novel after her 2019 debut “Aria.” She has said she returns to Iran through her writing because growing up amid the aggression of the revolution and the Iran-Iraq War “really marked me.”
Patmeena Sabit is nominated for “Good People,” which follows a wealthy Afghan-American family thrust into the court of public opinion after a tragedy, as media and community members scrutinize their lives. Sabit, born in Afghanistan, has said her family fled to Pakistan after the Soviet invasion and later moved to Virginia, where the novel is set. She said she studied international development at McGill University, where she wrote a thesis about honour-based violence and crimes in Jordan, and that the academic research laid the groundwork for her first novel.
Tara Gereaux is a finalist for “Wild People Quiet,” which explores the repercussions of a woman hiding her Métis identity while living in a prairie town in the 1940s. Gereaux said the theme of the novel was inspired by a question about her own family, including her grandfather, who did not discuss their Métis identity when she was growing up. She described setting the story in the 1940s as a way to understand the time period when her grandfather was young, and said she has since met others across the country who shared similar experiences of families not talking openly about Métis heritage.
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