Five of the 13 authors nominated for this year’s Giller Prize will be appearing at the Vancouver Writers Fest in October. Joseph Boyden, Wayne Grady, Wayne Johnston, Lisa Moore and Michael Winter are all on the Giller long list, announced this morning at an event hosted by the Vancouver Writers Fest and UBC’s Creative Writing department.
“We finalize our program well in advance of any of the big prize lists being announced,” says Hal Wake, Vancouver Writers Fest artistic director. “But it’s especially rewarding when authors we are excited to bring to Vancouver are also those who are judged to be noteworthy elsewhere.”
The Giller Prize highlights the best in Canadian fiction published this year. Wayne Grady, who has previously won the Governor General’s award for translation, is nominated for the Giller for his first novel, Emancipation Day, which Grady says took him 20 years to write. The other four nominees that are coming to this year’s Writers Fest are well established authors with several novels to their credit.
The Scotiabank Giller Prize, headquartered in Toronto, chose to make the announcement at UBC in recognition of “the vibrant literary community on Canada’s West Coast.” This year’s Vancouver Writers Fest is the largest in the Festival’s 26-year history, with more than 80 events which are expected to attract more than 16,000 readers.
Tickets for the festival, which runs from Oct. 22 to 27, are on sale now through VancouverTix.com or by calling 604-629-8849. Tickets are also available at the Writers Fest box office, 1398 Cartwright Street. For more information on this year’s festival visit writersfest.bc.ca/2013festival.
