Rogers Writers’ Trust names finalists for award
Five Canadian fiction writers vying for beefed-up honour that now totals $50,000
The finalists for the Rogers Writers’ Trust have been announced, one day after the award doubled its fiction prize to $50,000 for the winner and $5,000 for each of the four finalists nominated for the prestigious prize, which recognizes the year’s best Canadian novel or short-story collection.
The five writers and books vying for this year’s award are:
Carleigh Baker for Bad Endings, Anvil Press
Claire Cameron (Toronto) for The Last Neanderthal, Doubleday Canada
David Chariandy for Brother, McClelland & Stewart
Omar El Akkad for American War, McClelland & Stewart
Leanne Betasamosake Simpson for This Accident of Being Lost, House of Anansi Press
The finalists were chosen from a field of 141 books submitted by 57 publishers, by a jury made up of the writers Michael Christie, Christy Ann Conlin and Tracey Lindberg.
“$50,000 can be a life-changing amount for a writer,” said Mary Osborne, executive director of the Writers’ Trust of Canada, in a statement about the expanded prize money.
“The Writers’ Trust is hugely grateful to Rogers for its strong commitment to this prize and for its long history of support for Canadian writers.”
Chariandy also appeared on the 2017 Scotiabank Giller Prize long list earlier this month. If he wins both prizes, he’ll receive an unprecedented $150,000.
Past winners of the Writers’ Trust prize founded in 1997 include André Alexis, Austin Clarke, Alice Munro, Lawrence Hill and Emma Donoghue.
In 2014, the Scotiabank Giller Prize doubled its purse to $100,000 for the winner and $10,000 for each finalist on a short list that usually runs at five titles but has been known to run to six.
Sean Michaels was the first writer to win that enhanced prize.
The next of the “big three” national Canadian literary prizes, the Governor General’s Literary Award, will announce its short list next Wednesday. Those nominees won’t be vying for an enhanced payout; the amount awarded to the winner still stands at $25,000, with each finalist receiving $1,000.
“More money and greater recognition for Canadian writers is always great news. We congratulate our award counterparts on this increase in support,” said Tara Lapointe, the GG award’s director of outreach and business development.
“We have no immediate plan to increase the prize value, which totals $448,000 and is paid through the Canada Council without corporate sponsorship.”
There are prizes in both English and French in seven categories including fiction, drama, translation, nonfiction, poetry and two for young people’s literature.
Both the Writers’ Trust and Giller prizes are supported by corporate sponsors.
Winning multiple prizes among the “big three” is not unprecedented. In 2016, Madeleine Thien won both the Giller and the GG for her book Do Not Say We Have Nothing while, in 2015, Alexis won both the Writers’ Trust prize (which was then worth $25,000) and the Giller Prize, worth $100,000, for his novel Fifteen Dogs.
The winner of this year’s Writers’ Trust prize will be revealed Nov.14 in a ceremony at the Glenn Gould Studio in Toronto. There are seven literary awards in total being handed out, with more than $250,000 in prize money up for grabs.
Those awards include the Hilary Weston Writers’ Trust Prize for Nonfiction, the Writers’ Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize for best short story, the Latner Writers’ Trust Poetry Prize and the Vicky Metcalf Award for Literature for Young People.