Emma Donoghue, Madeleine Thien, David Bergen among 12 writers on the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist

Image | HIWI - Do Not Say We Have Nothing by Madeleine Thien

Caption: Madeleine Thien's novel won the 2016 Governor General's Literary Award for fiction and the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. (Babak Salari, Knopf Canada)

Both established names and up-and-coming writers make up the longlist for the 2016 Scotiabank Giller Prize. Past winner David Bergen is nominated for his new novel, Stranger; and Emma Donoghue, who has enjoyed recent success with the film adaptation of her novel Room, is acknowledged for her newest effort, The Wonder. Madeleine Thien continues to rack up the accolades for Do Not Say We Have Nothing, which was also longlisted for the 2016 Man Booker Prize.
New writers to the Giller fold include Mona Awad, whose novel 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl won the Amazon.ca First Novel Award earlier this year; and Kerry Lee Powelll. Andrew Battershill's debut effort, Pillow, gets a nod, as does the first novel of longtime poet Gary Barwin, Yiddish for Pirates.
The complete longlist for the $100,000 prize — which is the richest in Canadian literature — is:
A five-person jury consisting of Canadians Lawrence Hill, Kathleen Winter and Jeet Heer, British author Samantha Harvey and Scottish author Alan Warner, chose the 12-title longlist from 161 publisher submissions.
The shortlist will be announced on Sept. 26, 2016. The winner will be announced on Nov. 7, 2016.
André Alexis won the prize in 2015 for his novel Fifteen Dogs.