Food protest adds spice to Canadian book awards

Michelle Pauli writing in The Guardian overnight.

A former radio journalist has beaten literary heavyweights Michael Ondaatje and MG Vassanji to Canada's most prestigious literary prize at an awards ceremony controversial only for Margaret Atwood's boycott of the menu.

Elizabeth Hay, 56, last night won the 2007 Scotiabank Giller prize, worth £20,500, for Late Nights on Air, her tale of an eccentric group of people working a local radio station in the 1970s.
Hay's third novel, it draws on her years working as a public broadcaster in Yellowknife, capital of the Northwest Territories. It tells the story of a hard-bitten journalist who falls in love with a voice on the radio.

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