Getting Warmer …

Posted 16 October, 2007 in Uncategorized |

Well, the Gillers may be the glitzier and more lucrative Canadian literary awards, but the Governor General’s shortlist is consistently proving to be the more interesting.

Announced this morning at a press conference at Ben McNally Books in Toronto, the seventy shortlisted books in fourteen categories represent a good cross-section of Canadian writing. As noted in the Canada Council for the Arts press release that accompanied the announcement, at least eleven of the finalists are under the age of thirty-five, and forty of the finalists are first-time nominees.

In the coveted English-language fiction category, two of the nominees — Michael Ondaatje for Divisadero and M.G. Vassanji for The Assassin’s Song — are also on the Giller shortlist, but these two are so predictable as to almost beggar comment. The rest of the list is more interesting. Barbara Gowdy’s Helpless and David Chariandy’s Soucouyant were longlisted for this year’s Giller, but didn’t make the final cut. And the fifth title — Heather O’Neill’s Lullabies for Little Criminals — is a real surprise, at least to your humble correspondent.

O’Neill’s book was actually released in 2006, but was too late to qualify for last year’s award. (It is already the 2007 Canada Reads selection, and was a finalist for the 2006 Amazon.ca/Books in Canada First Novel Award.) That it has remained on the jury’s radar for so long speaks volumes. It is also a testament to the makeup of the GG jury, which this year consists of novelists Austin Clarke, Eden Robinson, and Rudy Wiebe. This is a better-rounded jury, in my opinion, than the Giller jury of Camilla Gibb, David Bergen, and Lorna Goodison, in the sense that there is a real mixture of sensibilities at work, which is bound to produce a more interesting shortlist.

The poetry category features mainstays Margaret Atwood (nominated for The Door) and Dennis Lee (for yesno), along with lesser-known names Don Domanski (All Our Wonder Unavenged), Brian Henderson (Nerve Language), and Rob Winger (Muybridge’s Horse: A Poem in Three Phases).

In the drama category, four of the five nominees are published by Playwrights Canada Press: Salvatore Antonio (In Gabriel’s Kitchen), Anosh Irani (The Bombay Plays: The Matka King and Bombay Black), Rosa Laborde (Leo), and Colleen Murphy (The December Man). Preventing Playwrights Canada Press from a clean sweep is Talonbooks, which published the fifth shortlisted play, What Lies Before Us, by Morris Panych.

In nonfiction, the nominees run the gamut from an examination of gun culture through the ages to a biography of a former Canadian Prime Minister to a polemic about the dangers imperilling songbirds in a modern world. The nominees are Rodrigo Bascuñán and Christian Pearce for Enter the Babylon System: Unpacking Gun Culture from Samuel Colt to 50 Cent, John English for Citizen of the World: The Life of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Volume One: 1919-1968, Stephanie Nolen for 28: Stories of AIDS in Africa, Karolyn Smardz Frost for I’ve Got a Home in Glory Land: A Lost Tale of the Underground Railroad, and Bridget Stutchbury for Silence of the Songbirds: How We Are Losing the World’s Songbirds and What We Can Do to Save Them.

For the first time this year, the cash prize for each category will be increased to $25,000 from $15,000. This is in honour of the Canada Council’s fiftieth anniversary. (The increased prize levels will remain in place henceforth; sadly for previous years’ winners, the increase is not retroactive.) Non-winners among the shortlisted authors will each receive $1,000.

The winners will be announced on Tuesday, November 27 at La Grande Bibliothèque de Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec, in Montreal.

The complete list of nominees in both English and French languages can be found here.