Writers’ Trust of Canada to hand out seven book prizes, cash

TORONTO — The Writers’ Trust of Canada is set to hand out seven awards and more than $330,000 in prize money at its annual awards bash tonight.

Prizes include best non-fiction and fiction books, career achievement awards, and outstanding debut book by an LGBTQ2S+ emerging writer.

Poet-novelists Canisia Lubrin and Fawn Parker are among the authors shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, worth $60,000.

Lubrin, the Whitby, Ont., writer who won the Griffin Poetry Prize in 2020, made the list for “Code Noir,” her debut work of fiction, and Parker is in the running for “Hi, It’s Me,” about a woman coming to terms with the death of her mother.

Sheung-King, the pen name for Richmond, B.C.- and Hong Kong-based author Aaron Tang, made the list for “Batshit Seven,” about a detached millennial living through the Hong Kong protests.

Finalists also include Edmonton’s Conor Kerr for his crime thriller “Prairie Edge” and Montreal’s Éric Chacour for “What I Know About You,” translated from French by Pablo Strauss of Quebec City.

Both Kerr and Chacour made the long list for the Giller Prize, while Lubrin, Parker and Sheung-King withdrew their names from Giller consideration over lead sponsor Scotiabank.

The $100,000 Giller Prize was awarded last night to Toronto poet-novelist Anne Michaels, for her novel “Held,” a multigenerational look at war and trauma spanning more than a century.

At the Giller ceremony, Michaels appealed for “unity” in Canada’s arts community as protesters gathered outside the gala to chant slogans and wave banners in a boycott.

The ceremony itself saw no disruptions after last year’s televised gala was crashed by pro-Palestinian demonstrators just as the big prize was announced.

Ongoing protests since then saw dozens of Canadian authors pull their books from Giller prize contention. They have called on the Giller Foundation to drop sponsors with ties to Israel, including Scotiabank due to its stake in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems.

The Writers’ Trust has not drawn such attention, despite several large corporate benefactors listed on its website, including Scotiabank.

Michael Deforge, a spokesperson for the protest group CanLit Responds, which has also targeted Hot Docs and the Scotiabank Photography Award as part of its No Arms in the Arts campaign, says the Giller boycott is the culmination of a year-long process during which the group felt its concerns weren’t being heard.

Deforge, a comics artist and illustrator, also points to Scotiabank as being the Giller’s premier sponsor while having a much larger stake in Elbit Systems than Canada’s other major banks, as outlined in a recent Globe and Mail story reviewing securities filings and investment fund performance.

“The goal of a boycott isn’t to achieve some sort of moral purity, but to identify targets in our industry where we have the most leverage,” Deforge said in an email.

The Writers’ Trust awards ceremony will be held at CBC’s Glenn Gould Studio and hosted by Canadian playwright and performer Charlie Petch.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 19, 2024.

Cassandra Szklarski, The Canadian Press