Elizabeth Hay Wins Giller

Elizabeth Hay has won the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Canada’s richest literary award. Here’s what Reuters reported that she said:

“I feel very lucky, so lucky in fact that I will probably be hit by a truck tomorrow so it is important that I say my thank-you’s now,” said Hay, who was previously nominated for the prize in 2000 for A Student of Weather.

Meanwhile, Ed Rants reports that Margaret Atwood and her husband, Graeme Gibson, “brought their own dinner in a box to the Giller Prize reception to protest a Four Seasons development that threatens the endangered Grenada dove. They said they could not accept food and drink from the Four Seasons, although they seemed to have no problem occupying the premises.”

(And it's a good thing Ed did mention it, because the article he pointed to at The Toronto Star has since vanished.)

Also nominated:

• Divisadero, by Michael Ondaatje (McClelland & Stewart)
• A Secret Between Us, by Daniel Poliquin, translated by Donald Winkler (Douglas & McIntyre)
• The Assassin’s Song, by M.G. Vassanji (Doubleday Canada)
• Effigy, by Alissa York (Random House Canada)

January Magazine’s 2000 interview with Hay is here.