The longlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, given annually to an outstanding work of Canadian fiction, has been revealed, with Sheila Heti and Antoine Wilson among the 14 authors in contention for the award.
Heti was nominated for her novel Pure Colour, which a critic for Kirkus called “as alien as a moon rock and every bit as wondrous.” Heti was previously longlisted for the Giller in 2018 for her novel Motherhood.
Wilson made the longlist for his latest novel, Mouth to Mouth, as did Noor Naga for If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English, Kim Fu for Lesser Known Monsters of the 21st Century, and Billy-Ray Belcourt for A Minor Chorus.
Also nominated for the award were André Forget’s In the City of Pigs, Rawi Hage’s Stray Dogs, Brian Thomas Isaac’s All the Quiet Places, Conor Kerr’s Avenue of Champions, Suzette Mayr’s The Sleeping Car Porter, André Narbonne’s Lucien & Olivia, Dimitri Nasrallah’s Hotline, Fawn Parker’s What We Both Know, and Tsering Yangzom Lama’s We Measure the Earth With Our Bodies.
The Giller Prize was first awarded in 1994 to M.G. Vassanji’s The Book of Secrets. Previous winners have included Alice Munro for The Love of a Good Woman and Runaway, and Esi Edugyan for Half-Blood Blues and Washington Black.
The shortlist for the prize will be announced on Sept. 27, with the winner named at a ceremony on Nov. 7.
Michael Schaub, a journalist and regular contributor to NPR, lives near Austin, Texas.
