The Giller Prize continues Monday in the shadow of ongoing boycotts and protests

A year after protesters disrupted the Giller Prize award ceremony to highlight lead sponsor Scotiabank’s stake in an Israeli arms manufacturer, the literary community is gearing up for the ceremony again — but it will look a little different this time.

Last November, pro-Palestinian protesters brought the televised event to a brief halt when they took to the stage with signs reading “Scotiabank Funds Genocide”.

Although the same cloud of controversy hangs over the ceremony this year, the show will not be broadcast live. Instead, the event will be recorded by the CBC and broadcast hours later.

When asked by The Canadian Press, neither the Giller Foundation nor the TV network attributed the change to the protests, noting that they have done the same at other awards shows in recent years.

But the demonstrations and calls to action continue to ripple through the world of Canadian literature. The protesters were arrested on the night of last year’s Giller ceremony, and soon after hundreds of writers signed a letter calling for the charges against them to be dropped.

The list included many writers who had previously won or been nominated for the Giller.

“There’s not really a way I can rationalize my way out of this if I feel like what’s happening is genocide and I feel like it’s wrong,” said Thea Lim, a former Giller- finalist who signed the letter early and has continued. to correct the advocacy group No Arms in the Arts.

Authors withdraw their books from consideration

Lim and others object to the Giller Foundation’s funders, particularly Scotiabank, because of their stake in Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. No Arms in the Arts is also protesting funders Indigo, for its CEO’s charity that supports Israeli defense officers from abroad, and the Azrieli Foundation, for its business ties to illegal settlements in the occupied West Bank.

For Lim, the choice to boycott the Giller Prize became a matter of “sway,” she said. Her position in the CanLit scene—one she attributes in part to her debut novel A sea of ​​minutes being on Giller’s 2018 shortlist – meant she could have some influence on an issue she cared deeply about.

“It also gave me a sense of having created a space for other writers to be able to do that,” Lim said. “Because there is great risk, and I think we see that very clearly.”

Dozens of authors withdrew their books from consideration for this year’s Giller Prize, including some who went on to nab places on other notable shortlists such as the Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize and the Governor-General’s Literary Award. Sarah Bernstein, who won the Giller in 2023, was among those who withdrew their work.

A new call by CanLit responding to the Giller Prize being divested from Scotiabank has received more than 300 signatories as of Monday, all of whom have pledged to refrain from submitting works to the prize or participating in events related to it until the demands are met .

Scotiabank is reducing its stake in Elbit

There are signs that the sustained pressure from this collective action is having an impact.

The Scotiabank subsidiary has since sold part of its stake in Elbit Systems. Securities filings show the bank’s 1832 Asset Management held about 642,000 shares of Elbit at the end of the second quarter of this year, worth about $113 million. That’s down from about 2,237,000 shares worth $467.4 million a year earlier.

Scotiabank has declined to comment on the protests, saying the divestment was based on “investment value” and made independently of the bank itself. But Israeli business publication Globes reported that Elbit’s chief executive attributed the partial divestment — and a correlated temporary drop in its share price — to anti-war pressure in Canada.

Although the Giller Foundation has not cut ties with the big bank entirely, it removed Scotiabank from the name of its award.

Giller’s executive director Elana Rabinovitch, whose late father founded the award about 30 years ago to honor his late wife, said in an email Saturday that Giller’s contract with Scotiabank expires at the end of next year and that the organization will announce the next steps when it is ready.

Rabinovitch also questioned the methods of the boycotts.

“No one could take issue with writers saying what they think, writing what they think and protesting what they see as unfair,” she said. “But boycotting, censoring and blacklisting authors seems to me contrary to the spirit of what great literature is all about.”

Aliya Pabani, a spokesperson for the No Arms in the Arts campaign, said in a statement on Sunday that equating boycotts with censorship is “ridiculous” and said literary prizes and institutions are the ones with the power to blacklist writers.

Shortlisted authors torn under boycott

The winner of the Giller will receive $100,000, while the finalists will receive $10,000. For translated works, the money is shared, with 70 percent going to the author and 30 percent to the translator.

Some of this year’s shortlisted authors are still struggling with the boycott.

“I can say that I’ve been thinking about it non-stop and writing about it every day for weeks now because what needs to be said needs to be said so carefully because it means so much and then I’m not ready to talk about that, says Anne Michaels, finalist for her novel Held.

Similarly, Anne Fleming, whose novel Curious made the list, said she didn’t “want to wade into it.”

“I think it’s a complicated situation,” Fleming said in the hours after she was shortlisted. “I think what I feel comfortable saying is that, broadly, as a culture, I’m in the midst of an important shakeup about where funding for the arts comes from. It’s not just Giller. It stretches go far beyond that, and it’s not just here’.

Other shortlisted authors this year include Conor Kerr for Prairie EdgeDeepa Rajagopalan for the short story collection Peacocks of Instagram and Eric Chacour for his novel What I know about youtranslated from the original French by Pablo Strauss.