Canada’s Giller Prize controversy spotlights tensions between politics and literary prizes

Canada’s Giller Prize was recently awarded to novelist and poet Anne Michaels for her novel Held amid controversy.

The Giller Prize is Canada’s most lucrative literary award, with a prize package of $100,000 for the winner and $10,000 for the shortlisted nominees.

The prestige of the award is being overshadowed by substantial criticism and protest. The advocacy coalition of arts groups No Arms in the Arts is calling for the Giller Foundation to push lead sponsor Scotiabank to fully divest from Elbit Systems, an Israeli arms company. In August, media reported Scotiabank’s asset management subsidiary had reduced its shares in Elbit Systems, following public pressure.

Some Giller winners (Sarah Bernstein, Suzette Mayr, Omar El Akkad, Madeleine Thien, Sean Michaels, Lynn Coady, Johanna Skibsrud and Michael Ondaatje) state in an open letter that “the only way to remedy what has been a deeply divisive period in Canadian arts is for the chief funders of so many arts prizes and organisations in Canada – banks such as Scotiabank – to divest from companies whose products are currently being used in mass killing.”

While the controversy is about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict interfering with the world of Canadian letters, it also reveals deeply antagonistic ideas about literature’s social role.

Last year’s Giller awards had already been troubled by protests. This year, two jurors withdrew and over 300...

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