Lynn Coady has been named the 2013 winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her short story collection Hellgoing, published by House of Anansi Press.
The announcement was made at a black-tie dinner and award ceremony hosted by Jian Ghomeshi, attended by nearly 500 members of the publishing, media and arts communities. The gala aired on CBC Television at 9 p.m. (9.30 p.m. NT).
This year the prize celebrates its twentieth anniversary.
A shortlist of five authors and their books was announced on October 8, 2013. Those finalists were:
- Dennis Bock for his novel Going Home Again, published by HarperCollins Canada
- Lynn Coady for her short story collection Hellgoing, published by House of Anansi Press
- Craig Davidson for his novel Cataract City, published by Doubleday Canada
- Lisa Moore for her novel Caught, published by House of Anansi Press
- Dan Vyleta for his novel The Crooked Maid, published by HarperCollins Canada
The shortlist and ultimate winner were selected by the esteemed three-member jury empanelled for the 2013 prize: Canadian writers Margaret Atwood and Esi Edugyan; and American author Jonathan Lethem.
Of the winning book, the jury wrote:
"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. Whether from the perspective of a writer flailing in the social atmosphere of a professional conference, or a woman trying to extend forgiveness to a lover's abusive father, Coady offers a worldview full of mournful humour, ready indignation, and vertiginous possibility; the reader feels in the presence of life itself."
LYNN COADY is the author of the bestselling novel The Antagonist, which was a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize, as well as the novels Mean Boy, Saints of Big Harbour, and Strange Heaven and the short story collection Play the Monster Blind. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award and the Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour, and has four times made The Globe and Mail's annual list of Top 100 Books. Originally from Cape Breton, she now lives in Edmonton, Alberta, where she is a founding and senior editor of the award-winning magazine Eighteen Bridges.
During tonight's award ceremony, a roster of celebrity presenters – Wendy Crewson, Paul Haggis, Jennifer Podemski, Shad and George Stroumboulopoulos – introduced the shortlisted authors and presented video profiles highlighting their nominated books.
The Scotiabank Giller Prize was delighted to congratulate two-time Giller-winner and inaugural jury member Alice Munro, on being named the 2013 recipient of the Nobel Prize for Literature.
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