The shortlisted six – Giller Prize shortlist announced

Wednesday, October 15, 2014

And then there were six.

The shortlist for this year’s Giller Prize was announced on Monday, October 6 in Toronto to an anxious throng of bibliophiles across the country. This year’s list is a bit larger than in previous years with six scribes spotlighted instead of the usual five. 

In the running for the 2014 Giller Prize are:

• David Bezmozgis, The Betrayers (HarperCollins Canada)
• Frances Itani, Tell (HarperCollins Canada)
• Sean Michaels, Us Conductors (Random House Canada)
• Heather O’Neill, The Girl Who Was Saturday Night (HarperCollins Canada)
• Miriam Toews, All My Puny Sorrows (Knopf Canada, an imprint of Random House Canada)
• Padma Viswanathan, The Ever After of Ashwin Rao (Random House Canada)

Miriam Toews’ inclusion on the shortlist follows her nomination last week for this year’s Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize, which was also for All My Puny Sorrows. She is one of two Access Copyright creator affiliates on this year’s shortlist, joining Padma Viswanathan.

On the publisher side, both HarperCollins Canada and Random House Canada scored CanLit hat tricks by splitting the six nominated titles.

This year’s Giller Prize will be the most lucrative in its history with the winning author receiving a prize of $100,000 with the remaining five authors on the shortlist netting $10,000 each.

CanLit enthusiasts have a little over four weeks to wait until the winner is announced on November 10.