“Hellgoing“, a short story collection by Lynn Coady, has won Canada’s prestigious Scotiabank Giller Prize, the largest cash award for literature in the country.
“I can’t express how honoured I am to play even the smallest part in such an inspiring event,” said Coady at the award ceremony on Tuesday night (November 4). “It makes me proud not just to be a Canadian writer but to be a Canadian, to live in a country where we treat our writers like movie stars.”
The award recognizes excellence in Canadian fiction – long format or short stories – and endows a cash prize annually of $50,000.
The three person jury, Canadian writers Margaret Atwood and Esi Edugyan; and American author Jonathan Lethem praised Coady’s collection of short stories:
“The eight stories in Lynn Coady’s Hellgoing offer a stupendous range of attitudes, narrative strategies, and human situations, each complete and intricate, creating a world the reader enters as totally as that of a novel, or a dream. Yet the book as a whole is also magically united by Coady’s vivid and iconoclastic language, which brims with keen and sympathetic wit.”
Four other writers were on the short list for the award:
- Dennis Bock for his novel Going Home Again
- Craig Davidson for his novel Cataract City
- Lisa Moore for her novel Caught
- Dan Vyleta for his novel The Crooked Maid
The longlist of 13 authors was announced in September. One hundred and forty seven titles were submitted by 61 publishing houses from across the country.
This is the 20th anniversary of the awards, founded in 1994 by Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller.
More information:
Giller Prize – Lynn Coady Wins The 2013 Scotiabank Giller Prize statement – here
CBC News – Lynn Coady wins Giller Prize for Hellgoing – here
Globe and Mail – Edmonton author Lynn Coady wins 2013 Giller Prize – here
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