First Black woman to win the Scotiabank Giller Prize
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Giller Prize Longlist Has a Familiar Face
The Scotiabank
Giller Prize announced early this week its longlist for the 2018 Canadian book award. There
are 12 works of fiction in the running for this year’s $100,000 prize.
Esi Edugyan, is one of the authors longlisted for Canada’s most
prestigious Fiction Prize. She has been nominated for her new book Washington
Black.
Washington Black
tells the story of George Washington Black; an eleven-year-old field slave living
on a Barbados sugar plantation. From the brutal cane plantations to the icy
waters of the Canadian Arctic, from the mud-filled streets of London to the
eerie deserts of Morocco, Washington Black is the tale – inspired by a true
story – of a world destroyed by slavery and the search to make it whole again.
Esi
Edugyan made history in 2011 by being the first Black woman to win the
Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel Half-Blood Blues. She is the only past winner on the
longlist (she won in 2011 for Half-Blood Blues). Her book is also in the running for the
world’s most important fiction prize, UK’s 2018 Man Booker Prize.
Born and raised
in Calgary, Alberta, to Ghanaian immigrant parents, dugyan
studied creative writing at the University of Victoria BC.
She lives and writes in Victoria, she and her husband poet Steven Price
are the parents of a7-year old child.
This year the Giller
Prize celebrates its 25th anniversary.
The Prize will be presented on Monday, November 19.
In Other Book Prize News
Scarborough Author Coming Back To Malvern As Part of
Toronto Book Awards
Trinidadian
Canadian writer David Chariandy’s award winning novel, Brothers, is up for
another prize. The winner of the 2017
Rogers Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize has just been nominated for this year’s
Toronto Book Awards.
David Chariandy’s
book is a devastating story about the love between a mother and her sons, the
impact of race, masculinity and the senseless loss of young lives in
Scarborough, in the violent summer of 1991.
Brothers is one of
five books on the City of Toronto and Toronto
Public Library‘s 2018 Toronto Book Awards shortlist. Established by
Toronto City Council in 1974, the awards honour books of literary merit that
are evocative of Toronto.
The 2018 shortlist
is:
· Dionne Brand “The
Unpublished City“,
· David Chariandy “Brother“,
· Carrianne Leung “That
Time I Loved You“,
· Lee Maracle “My
Conversations with Canadians“,
· Kerri Sakamoto “Floating
City“.
The winner of the
2018 Toronto Book Awards will be announced on October 10 at the Toronto
Reference Library. A week before the
award is handed out David Chariandy and the four other shortlisted authors will
be speaking in Malvern.
The Toronto Book
Awards is bringing the authors to Malvern to take part in a public discussion
of their books. The free panel event
will held at the Malvern Toronto Library Branch (30 Sewells Road) on
October 3 at 7 p.m.
This is the 44th
year of the Toronto Book Awards. The annual awards offer $15,000 in prize
money. Each shortlisted finalist will receive $1,000, with $10,000 going to the
winner.
On the jury for
this year’s Toronto Book Awards Committee are author Nathan Adler, Now
Magazine’s Susan G. Cole, author Kevin Hardcastle, poet Soraya Peerbaye and
author and owner of Another Book List. Itah Sadu.
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