Tuesday, October 21, 2008

The perfect lead-up: GG shortlists announced

For those of you who thought the Giller shortlist was "too young" or "too who?", the Canada Council has thrown you an intriguing bone today. The finalists for the Governor General's Literary Awards in Fiction, Non-fiction, and Poetry were announced, and the fiction list is surely a much more diverse (in terms of age, career trajectory and experience) group. Congratulations to Rivka Galchen, Rawi Hage, Nino Ricci, David Adams Richards and Fred Stenson, all of whom will be appearing at IFOA on Monday, October 27th for a special shortlist reading. Catch these and plenty more award-winning and nominated authors at events throughout the festival.

How about Hage, huh? Finalist in all three major fiction prizes? And Galchen in two?

I was speaking with a trusted authority on Canadian fiction last night (at the launch for Giles Blunt's highly praised new book, No Such Creature), and he assured me that after reading Nino Ricci's The Origin of Species he became convinced Ricci is a bona fide, real-life, all-jokes-aside literary genius. As devoted readers of this blog might already have guessed, Ricci's No. 1 in my GG pool.

PS. if there are any devoted readers out there, please let me know by commenting! If nothing else, it will make me feel a bit better about myself...

PPS: IFOA starts tomorrow!

1 comment:

Manuela said...

Hey Andrew, thank you for the blog - IFOA is starting and I'm very excited about it!! As I am sure all your readers are :)