RENOWNED AUTHOR REFLECTS ON HER GILLER PRIZE WIN, MENTORING WRITERS
Silence.
That’s what Madeleine Thien remembers about the evening of Nov. 7 in Toronto, in those moments after her name was called as the winner of the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize.
By that point, Thien’s fourth book Do Not Say We Have Nothing, a sweeping multi-generational tale of two musically gifted families in revolutionary China, had already picked up a Governor-General Literary Award and been a finalist for the Man Booker Prize.
But the author had convinced herself that she wasn’t going to win the Giller, considered Canada’s most prestigious literary award.
“Everything went quiet,” says Thien, in an interview from the Banff Centre this week. “I was surprisingly calm. I wasn’t expecting it at all. I had a thousand different reasons. My instinct told me I wasn’t going to win. So I was caught off guard. Maybe that’s why when I spoke I was so brief. But it was a joyful moment.”
Clearly, Thien is still processing the win, suggesting this sudden surge of attention has been “a big learning curve.”
“I’m really, really happy for the book and that seems very clear,” she says. “But for myself, it’s a confusing time to be honest.”
So Thien says she is also happy to be spending a week at the Banff Centre as a mentor and teacher to eight writers as part of the weeklong Emerging Writers Intensive. She will also give a free public talk Wednesday night.
The eight writers will be working with Thien on completing the first chapter of their novels.
“They are looking for a space to be creative, a little bit of guidance, but mostly someone to be a sounding board for the difficult questions they are struggling with that are both artistic and conceptual and sometimes personal in the writing life,” she says.
Thien’s own journey to completing her latest novel began in 2011, not long after the release of her harrowing Dogs of the Perimeter, about the long-term impacts of the Cambodian genocide. Do Not Say We Have Nothing spans from 1940s Shanghai to presentday Vancouver, offering intimate accounts of both Mao’s Cultural Revolution and the 1989 protests in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square as backdrops for the stories of two unusual families.
For now, Thien says she is not feeling any pressure, at least creatively, when it comes to following up what is fast becoming her most critically and commercially successful book.
“For me, because it’s my fourth book and because I’ve been finding a way to live from writing for 20 years with the books flying under the radar, on the artistic side of things I don’t yet feel that kind of pressure,” she says.
Along with the media attention she has received for the Giller win, Thien’s name has also been associated with the controversy surrounding the firing of the University of British Columbia’s head of creative writing and bestselling author Steven Galloway over accusations of sexual misconduct and harassment. Thien wrote an open letter to UBC, her alma mater, asking that her name be removed from its website and alumni pages over its handling of the investigation. She was also among the dozens of CanLit stars, including Margaret Atwood and Yann Martel, who signed a letter penned by author Joseph Boyden criticizing UBC for its secrecy and unfairness toward Galloway, and calling for an independent investigation. Many of those authors have faced backlash. Thien was reluctant to say much about the scandal.
“The whole situation is devastating,” she said. “For me, I was always speaking to the institution. I think at this point in time, I don’t know if I should have kept my letter private or public. I think the conversation is necessary, but I have to say that I’m completely devastated that the conversation is so brutal. It’s heartbreaking.”