Introducing the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize Jury
January 16, 2017
Elana Rabinovitch, Executive Director of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, today announced the five member jury panel for the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
The 2017 jury members are:
Canadian writers André Alexis, Anita Rau Badami (Jury Chair) and Lynn Coady, along with British author Richard Beard and American writer and playwright Nathan Englander.
Some background on the 2017 jury:
André Alexis was born in Trinidad and grew up in Canada. His novel, Fifteen Dogs, won the 2015 Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His debut novel, Childhood, won the Books in Canada First Novel Award, the Trillium Book Award, and was shortlisted for the Giller Prize and the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize. His other books include Pastoral (nominated for the Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize), Asylum, . His latest novel, The Hidden Keys, was published in 2016.
Anita Rau Badami is the author of four novels: Tamarind Mem, The Hero’s Walk, Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? and Tell it to the Trees. She is the recipient of various awards including the Marian Engel Prize, the Regional Commonwealth Award, and the Premio Berto Prize for International Literature. Published worldwide, her novels have also been nominated for the Ethel Wilson Prize, Hugh MacLennan Prize, the Orange Prize, the Kiriyama Prize, and the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. The Hero’s Walk was a finalist for CBC Radio’s Canada Reads in 2016. Born in India, Anita lives in Montreal, Quebec.
Richard Beard‘s six novels include Lazarus is Dead, Dry Bones and Damascus, which was a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His latest novel Acts of the Assassins was shortlisted for the Goldsmiths Prize in 2015. He is also the author of four books of narrative non-fiction, including his 2017 memoir The Day That Went Missing. Formerly Director of The National Academy of Writing in London, he is a Visiting Professor (2016/17) at the University of Tokyo, and has a Creative Writing Fellowship at the University of East Anglia.
Lynn Coady is a novelist whose fiction has been garnering acclaim since her first novel, Strange Heaven, was published and subsequently nominated for Canada’s Governor General’s Award for Fiction when she was 28. Her short story collection, Hellgoing, won the 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize, for which her novel, The Antagonist, was also nominated in 2011. Her fiction has been published in the U.K., U.S., Holland, France, and Germany. Her most recent book is a nonfiction enquiry into reading and digital culture called Who Needs Books? Coady lives in Toronto and writes for television.
Nathan Englander is the author of the internationally bestselling story collection For the Relief of Unbearable Urges, the novel The Ministry of Special Cases, and the collection What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank. He’s received the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His fiction has been widely anthologized, most recently in 100 Years of the Best American Short Stories, and has been translated into 20 languages. He’s the author of the play The Twenty-Seventh Man, which premiered at New York’s Public Theater, and translated the New American Haggadah (edited by Jonathan Safran Foer). He lives with his family in Brooklyn, New York.
Images of the 2017 jurors are available for download on the media resources page.
This year’s longlist will be released in September and the shortlist will be announced at a press event in Toronto in October. The finalists will be honoured and a winner named at a black-tie dinner and awards ceremony at Toronto’s Ritz-Carlton on Monday, November 20, 2017 (date updated after press release issued).
Rakuten Kobo has generously donated a Kobo Aura eReader to each member of the 2017 jury panel. The Scotiabank Giller Prize requires publishers to provide digital copies of its submitted titles in addition to print books.
This year marks the 24th anniversary of the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Submissions are now being accepted! The 2017 submission package, including new and updated rules and details, can be found at scotiabankgillerprize.ca/submissions
About the Prize
The Scotiabank Giller Prize strives to highlight the very best in Canadian fiction year after year. The prize awards $100,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English, and $10,000 to each of the finalists. The award is named in honour of the late literary journalist Doris Giller and was founded in 1994 by her husband, Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch.
About Scotiabank
At Scotiabank, we aim to support organizations that are committed to helping young people reach their full potential. Young people are our future leaders and Scotiabank’s goal is to help ensure that they have the necessary skills and resources they need to support their success. Together with our employees, the Bank supports causes at a grassroots level. Recognized as a leader for our charitable donations and philanthropic activities, in 2016, Scotiabank contributed more than $70 million to help our communities around the world.
Scotiabank is Canada’s international bank and a leading financial services provider in North America, Latin America, the Caribbean and Central America, and Asia-Pacific. We are dedicated to helping our 23 million customers become better off through a broad range of advice, products and services, including personal and commercial banking, wealth management and private banking, corporate and investment banking, and capital markets. With a team of more than 88,000 employees and assets of $896 billion (as at October 31, 2016), Scotiabank trades on the Toronto (TSX: BNS) and New York Exchanges (NYSE: BNS). For more information, please visit www.scotiabank.com and follow us on Twitter @ScotiabankViews.
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Media Enquiries
Elana Rabinovitch
Executive Director
Scotiabank Giller Prize
416-275 5418
elana@gillerprize.ca
Kristin McCleister
Public, Corporate and Government Affairs
Scotiabank
416-933-0646
Kristin.Mccleister@scotiabank.com