The Giller Prize Writers’ Circle is a new advisory panel composed of an exceptional group of award-winning Canadian writers, playwrights, journalists, documentarians, and historians.

The Writers’ Circle will serve as an advisory body to the Giller Foundation and to the Executive Director, offering perspectives and guidance to help shape the Foundation’s approach to supporting the Canadian writing community in ways that are inclusive, respectful, impactful, and meaningful.

Making up the group are Kamal Al-Solaylee, Eric Dupont, Charlotte Gray, Ann-Marie MacDonald, William Ping, Tanya Talaga and Kai Thomas.

The Circle is a living, breathing, evolving group. We will invite new members with different perspectives as we move forward.

The Circle will meet regularly to consider how best to serve and strengthen the literary community, and to support the Foundation’s mission of championing and amplifying Canadian writers and Canadian literature.

Kamal Al-Solaylee is the author of the bestseller Intolerable: A Memoir of Extremes, winner of the 2013 Toronto Book Award and a finalist for the CBC’s Canada Reads and the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction. His second book, Brown: What Being Brown in the World Today Means (to Everyone) won the Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing and was finalist for the Governor General’s Literary Awards for Nonfiction. His third book of nonfiction, Return: Why We Go Back to Where We Come From, was published in 2021 and was named a Book of the Year by the Globe and Mail and CBC Books. More recently, he wrote and produced a number of documentaries for CBC’s IDEAS on subjects as diverse as the Queen of Sheba, port cities, and nineteenth-century English writer Wilkie Collins. He holds a PhD in English and is the director of the School of Journalism, Writing, and Media at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.

Photo credit: Justine Latour

Eric Dupont is a novelist born in 1970 in Amqui, Quebec. Based in Montreal since 2003, he is the author of six novels, most of which have been translated into English. The English translation of his book Songs for the Cold of Heart was shortlisted for the Giller Prize in 2018.

His writing is known for its blend of magical realism and irony, where elements of the supernatural subtly emerge within everyday life, combined with a sharp but playful tone. He also enjoys oysters and biking to work.

Photo credit: Michelle Valberg

Charlotte Gray is one of Canada’s best-known writers of non-fiction. Born in England, and a graduate of Oxford University and the London School of Economics, Charlotte moved to Canada in 1978 but has also lived in Tokyo, Boston and New York City. She worked as a political commentator, book reviewer and magazine columnist before she turned to biography and popular history.

Charlotte’s twelve bestsellers include Sisters in the Wilderness; The Massey Murder; Reluctant Genius: Alexander Graham Bell and the Passion for Invention; and Gold Diggers, Striking It Rich in the Klondike. Her most recent book is Passionate Mothers, Powerful Sons: The Lives of Jennie Jerome Churchill and Sara Delano Roosevelt. Among her awards are the Edna Staebler Award, the Canadian Authors Award for Non-Fiction, the Floyd S. Chalmers Award in Ontario History, the Donald Creighton Award for Ontario History, the City of Ottawa non-fiction book award (twice), the Arthur Ellis Award for Non-Fiction Crime (twice), and the Toronto Book Award. She has also been shortlisted for awards including the Governor General’s Award for Non Fiction, the Charles Taylor Prize for Non-Fiction, and the B.C. Award for Non-Fiction. The U.S. Discovery Channel’s series Klondike was based on her book Gold Diggers.

Charlotte has chaired the boards of both Canada’s National History Society and the Art Canada Institute, and sits on the board of the Carol Shields Prize for fiction by a female or non-binary author. She has frequently served on juries, including for the Weston International Non-fiction Prize, the Cundill International History Prize, Scotiabank Giller Prize, and the RBC Taylor Prize.

An adjunct research professor at Carleton University, in Ottawa, she holds five honorary degrees, and is a member of the Order of Canada and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. Her work has appeared in the Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star, The Ottawa Citizen, Walrus, The Guardian and Canada’s History, and she is a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal.

Photo credit: Travis Silverman

Ann-Marie MacDonald, O.C., is a novelist, playwright, actor, and broadcast host.  Her work has been honoured with numerous awards, including the Chalmers, the Governor General’s, Gemini, Dora Mavor Moore, John Drainie, the Gascon-Thomas, the Canadian Authors Association, the Canadian Booksellers Association, the Commonwealth Prize, and, together with Alisa Palmer, the Canadian Stage Artistic Achievement Prize. Her writing for the stage includes the plays Goodnight Desdemona (Good Morning, Juliet), Belle Moral:  A Natural History, and Hamlet-911; the libretto for the chamber opera Nigredo Hotel, and book and lyrics for Anything That Moves; her novels are Fall On Your Knees, The Way the Crow Flies, Adult Onset, and Fayne.  Ann-Marie graduated from the Acting Program of The National Theatre School of Canada.  In 2019 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Canada.  She is married to theatre director Alisa Palmer, with whom she has two children.

William Ping is a novelist and journalist, born and raised in St. John’s. His debut novel Hollow Bamboo was published by HarperCollins in 2023 and was shortlisted for the Amazon.ca First Novel Award, the Rakuten Kobo Emerging Writer Prize, the BMO Winterset Award, and the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award as well as being longlisted for the Dublin Literary Award, the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and the Newfoundland and Labrador Book Award.

Tanya Talaga is an award-winning journalist, author and filmmaker of Anishinaabe and Polish descent. She is a proud member of Fort William First Nation, in the Robinson-Superior Treaty territory.

For over 20 years, Talaga was a journalist at the Toronto Star and is now a regular columnist at the Globe and Mail. She’s written three national bestsellers; Seven Fallen Feathers, All Our Relations and The Knowing; a seminal unravelling of the centuries-long oppression of Indigenous People that continues to reverberate in these communities today. It is the focus of a four-part, CBC documentary series that won the 2025 Canadian Screen Award for Best Writing. It was produced by Talaga’s production company, Makwa Creative – formed to elevate Indigenous voices and stories through film.

Talaga holds six honorary doctorates, was the 2017/2018 Atkinson Fellow in Public Policy, and in 2018, was the first Anishinaabe woman to be the CBC Massey Lecturer.

Photo credit: Brooke Bridges

Kai Thomas is an author and educator. His background and body of work span from land stewardship, carpentry, and small-scale farming to historical research and scholarship.

His debut novel, In the Upper Country, was awarded the 2023 Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust prize for fiction and was featured in major news outlets such as NPR, CBC, The New York Times, and the Globe and Mail.

He’s currently working on another novel as well as a children’s book. He’s also serving as a mentor in the King’s College Creative Writing MFA program, leading the Ottawa-based Great River Artists’ Collective, and co-managing agroforestry operations for a wild-simulated ginseng business, Old Roots.

Kai has always worked in diverse fields. A passion for nature drew him to plant trees, farm vegetables, develop outdoor education programs, and pursue natural building and construction. An inclination for community-building led him to participate in several grassroots community programs and non-profits, most recently at Soul Fire Farm, where he built and managed infrastructure for several years. He’s studied history, culture, and creative writing at the university level, earning a Bachelor’s degree in Anthropology and African Studies from McGill and the University of Ghana, and a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Guelph.