Anne Michaels is the Winner of
the 2024 Scotiabank Giller Prize
November 18, 2024
November 18, 2024 (Toronto, Ontario) – Anne Michaels has been named the winner of the 2024 Giller Prize for her novel, Held, published by McClelland & Stewart, taking home $100,000.
The announcement was made at an award ceremony attended by more than one hundred guests. The ceremony was broadcast on CBC, CBC Radio, CBC Listen, and streamed on CBC Gem and the CBC YouTube channel.
The remaining finalists, listed below, will each receive $10,000:
- Éric Chacour for his novel What I Know About You (translated by Pablo Strauss), published by Coach House Books
- Anne Fleming for her novel Curiosities, published by Knopf Canada
- Conor Kerr for his novel Prairie Edge, published by Strange Light
- Deepa Rajagopalan for her short story collection Peacocks of Instagram, published by House of Anansi Press
The longlisted and shortlisted authors, as well as the winner of the 2024 Giller Prize were selected by an esteemed jury panel: Canadian authors Kevin Chong and Noah Richler (jury chair), and singer-songwriter Molly Johnson. On September 4, the jury narrowed down over 100 submitted works to a longlist of 12 titles. The shortlist of five was selected on October 9, and just this morning, the jury met to choose tonight’s winner.
Of the winning book, the jury wrote:
“Anne Michaels’ Held is a novel that floats, a beguiling association of memories, projections, and haunted instances through which the very notion of our mortality, of our resilience and desires, is interrogated in passages as impactful as they can be hypnotic. Ostensibly Held begins with a man, John, lying injured on a First World War battlefield who returns, broken, to the woman he loves and his Yorkshire photography studio, where ghostly figures emerge from the shadows of the photographs he develops—the sorts of “images that can, like certain rhythms, dismantle us.” In a story of querulous fragments refuting a novel’s usual form, Michaels conveys war’s legacy of harm and trauma reverberating across generations, but through them all our irrefutable connectedness. Michaels’ mastery of word and situations is understated but insistent, an altogether successful reliance that deflects attention from its author and embeds the reader in the resoundingly mysterious and ephemeral. Here is a novel in which we are willingly held.”
Anne Michaels’ books have been translated into more than forty-five languages and have won dozens of international awards, including the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Fiction Prize, and the Lannan Literary Award for Fiction. She has been short-listed for the Governor General’s Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, twice short-listed for the Giller Prize, and twice long-listed for the International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award. Her novel Fugitive Pieces was adapted into a feature film. From 2015 to 2019, she was Toronto’s poet laureate. She lives in Canada.
Relive the winning moment by visiting CBCBooks.ca, or CBC Gem to stream the ceremony on demand.
Images from tonight’s ceremony will be available on the media resources page.
Anne Michaels will be interviewed at The Toronto Reference Library by writer, critic, and scholar Randy Boyagoda at 3 p.m. on November 19.
For the sixth year in a row, the winner of the Giller Prize will be honored by the San Miguel Writers’ Conference & Literary Festival in Mexico. Founded in 2006, the San Miguel Writers’ Conference is a premier international literary event set in the vibrant cultural heart of Mexico. Anne Michaels will be featured in a one-on-one conversation inclusive of a short reading followed by a Q&A period with the audience. This event will take place on Sunday, February 16, 2025, from 2:15 to 3:30 p.m. local time.
The Giller Foundation continues its partnership with the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity. The Banff Centre will provide Anne Michaels with a two-week writer’s residency in the Leighton Artist Studios in the Town of Banff, Alberta. This residency includes the use of a private studio, access to Banff Centre facilities including the Paul D. Fleck Library and Archives, and access to Banff Centre talks, events, and performances taking place during the residency.
About the Prize
Founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994, the Giller Prize is Canada’s leading and most influential literary prize for fiction. The Giller Effect has been recognized industry-wide as one of the top drivers of book sales in Canada. The Giller Prize awards $100,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel, graphic novel or short story collection published in English, and $10,000 to each of the finalists. To date, the Giller Prize has awarded more than two million dollars to Canadian writers. The award is named in honour of Jack Rabinovitch’s wife, the late literary journalist, Doris Giller. The Giller Prize is sponsored by Scotiabank, Mantella Corporation, Indigo, and the Azrieli Foundation. CBC is the broadcast partner.
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