TORONTO, Nov. 18, 2019 /CNW/ - Ian
Williams has been named the winner of the 2019 Scotiabank
Giller Prize for his novel Reproduction, published by Random
House Canada, taking home $100,000
courtesy of Scotiabank.
The announcement was made at a black-tie dinner and award
ceremony hosted by Canadian singer-songwriter and actress
Jann Arden and attended by
450 members of the publishing, media and arts communities. The gala
was broadcast live commercial-free presented by Scotia Wealth
Management on CBC, CBC Radio One and streamed live on
CBCBooks.ca.
This year the Prize celebrates its 26th
anniversary.
The 2019 finalists were:
- David Bezmozgis for his short story collection
Immigrant City, published by HarperCollins Publishing
Ltd.
- Megan Gail Coles for her
novel Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club,
published by House of Anansi Press
- Michael Crummey for his
novel The Innocents, published by Doubleday Canada
- Alix Ohlin for her novel
Dual Citizens, published by House of Anansi Press
- Steven Price for his
novel Lampedusa, published by McClelland & Stewart
- Ian Williams for his
novel Reproduction, published by Random House Canada
The longlist, shortlist, and the winner of the 2019 Scotiabank
Giller Prize were selected by an esteemed five-member jury panel:
Canadian authors Donna Bailey
Nurse, Randy
Boyagoda (jury chair) and Canadian playwright José
Teodoro, Scottish-Sierra Leonean author Aminatta Forna
and Bosnian-American author Aleksandar
(Sasha) Hemon.
Of the winning book, the jury wrote:
Ian Williams's Reproduction is
many things at once. It's an engrossing story of disparate people
brought together and also a masterful unfolding of unexpected
connections and collisions between and across lives otherwise
separated by race, class, gender and geography. It's a pointed and
often playful plotting out of individual and shared stories in the
close spaces of hospital rooms, garages, mansions and apartments,
and a symphonic performance of resonant and dissonant voices, those
of persons wanting to impress, persuade, deny, or beguile others,
and always trying again.
Ian Williams is the author of
Personals, shortlisted for the Griffin Poetry Prize and the
Robert Kroetsch Poetry Book Award; Not Anyone's Anything,
winner of the Danuta Gleed Literary Award for the best first
collection of short fiction in Canada; and You Know Who You Are, a
finalist for the ReLit Prize for poetry. He was named as one of ten
Canadian writers to watch by CBC. Williams completed his Ph.D. in
English at the University of Toronto
and is currently an assistant professor of poetry in the Creative
Writing program at the University of British
Columbia. He was the 2014-2015 Canadian Writer-in-Residence
for the University of Calgary's
Distinguished Writers Programme. He has held fellowships or
residencies from the Banff Center, Vermont Studio Center, Cave
Canem, Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts, and Palazzo
Rinaldi in Italy. He was also a
scholar at the National Humanities Center Summer Institute for Literary Study and was a
judge for the 2018 Griffin prize. His writing has appeared in
several North American journals and anthologies.
Listen to CBC Radio's q tomorrow at 10
a.m. for an interview with Ian
Williams and relive the gala at CBCBooks.ca.
Head to @Scotiabank on Instagram on November 19 for an Ask Me Anything with Ian.
Ask the author your questions about his book during a live
Twitter chat hosted by @GillerPrize on Thursday, November 21 at 2
p.m. ET using the hashtag #GillerWinner.
Images from tonight's gala will be available on the Media
Resources page at www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca.
Quotes
I couldn't be happier for Ian. His novel resonated deeply
with the jury, evoking time, place and character that only the best
works of art can achieve. I feel confident that this book will
continue to find an even larger and more devoted audience across
Canada and throughout the
world.
- Elana Rabinovitch, Executive
Director, Scotiabank Giller Prize
"Congratulations to Ian Williams
for winning the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize! Scotiabank is very
proud to be a part of raising and advancing the profile of
Canada's best authors, both across
our country and around the world. We know that they make Canadians
richer, exposing us to new ideas. Congratulations again to
Ian Williams, and to all of the
short and longlisted authors. Your words have touched the lives of
readers across Canada and around
the world."
- John Doig, Executive Vice
President, Retail Distribution, Scotiabank
PARTNERSHIPS AND SPONSORSHIPS:
The winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize will be honoured with
a sit-down conversation and a reading at the 2020 San Miguel
Writers' Conference & Literary Festival, on February 13, 2020, the second day of the five-day
event. The winner, along with past winner Madeleine Thien, who will be one of the keynote
speakers, will join five other internationally acclaimed authors
for a week of keynote speeches, workshops, readings and round
tables.
The winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize will be given an
opportunity to explore, expand, and develop their practice during a
two-week, self-directed residency in Banff Centre for Arts and
Creativity's exclusive Leighton Artists' Studios. Located on
Treaty 7 territory in Banff National
Park, Banff Centre is Canada's largest post graduate arts and
leadership training institute (banffcentre.ca).
Air Canada is the official and
exclusive airline of the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Air
Canada's sponsorship helped take
the finalists across the country and into the United States for this year's Between the
Pages tour.
About the Prize
The Giller Prize, founded by
Jack Rabinovitch in 1994, highlights
the very best in Canadian fiction year after year. In 2005, the
prize teamed up with Scotiabank who increased the winnings
four-fold. The Scotiabank Giller Prize now 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 by her husband
Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch, who passed away in
August 2017.
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