Brampton author wins prestigious literary award
Published November 19, 2019 at 4:10 pm
Bramptonian and author, Ian Williams has won the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel Reproduction, published by Random House Canada, which took home $100,000 courtesy of Scotia
Bramptonian and author, Ian Williams has won the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize for his novel Reproduction, published by Random House Canada, which took home $100,000 courtesy of Scotiabank.
The Giller Prize, founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994, is a prestigious award that highlights the best in Canadian fiction. This year, the prize celebrated its 26th anniversary.
In 2005, they teamed up with Scotiabank, who increased the winnings. The Scotiabank Giller Prize now awards $100,000 annually to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English, along with $10,000 to each one of the finalists.
The award’s name honours the late literary journalist Doris Giller by her husband, Toronto businessman, Jack Rabinovitch, who passed away in August 2017.
The winner of this year’s prize was announced at a black-tie dinner and award ceremony, which was hosted by Canadian singer-songwriter and actress Jann Arden.
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450 members of the publishing, media and arts communities were in attendance and the gala was broadcast live on CBC, CBC Radio One and streamed live online.
The 2019 finalists included David Bezmozgis, Megan Gail Coles, Michael Crummey, Alix Ohlin, Steven Price and Ian Williams.
The finalists and the winner were selected by a jury panel which included Canadian authors Donna Bailey Nurse, Randy Boyagoda and Canadian playwright José Teodoro, Scottish-Sierra Leonean, author Aminatta Forna and Bosnian-American author Aleksandar (Sasha) Hemon.
“Ian Williams’s Reproduction is many things at once. It’s an engrossing story of disparate people brought together and also a masterful unfolding of unexpected connections and collisions between and across lives otherwise separated by race, class, gender and geography,” the jury wrote on the winning book.
“It’s a pointed and often playful plotting out of individual and shared stories in the close spaces of hospital rooms, garages, mansions and apartments, and a symphonic performance of resonant and dissonant voices, those of persons wanting to impress, persuade, deny, or beguile others, and always trying again,” they added.
Photo courtesy of the city of Brampton
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