Dartmouth author makes Giller Prize shortlist

Seventeen years ago, when he sat on the jury for the first-ever Giller Prize, novelist Mordecai Richler explained how he and his fellow jurors chose the finalists. Richler’s rationale was repeated by Jack Rabinovitch, the prize’s founder, on Tuesday morning as the nominees for the 2010 Scotiabank Giller Prize were announced.

"Looking for the first winner of this substantial prize," Richler wrote, "we will not favour young writers over old or vice versa. We don’t give a damn whether a book has been written by a man or a woman, a black, gay, or native writer, or somebody whose family has been here for 200 years. We’ll be looking for the best book of fiction published in Canada by a Canadian, and we will expect you to correct us if we are wrong."

This year’s jury has certainly taken Richler’s words to heart, choosing a list that (mostly) eschews the big presses, celebrates the short story, and is set to introduce a new, exciting generation of writers to Canadian readers.

The finalists are:

Â¥ Winnipeg’s David Bergen for The Matter With Morris (Phyllis Bruce Books/HarperCollins Publishers), a novel the jury described as "deft and understated" and "a wise, ironic portrait of our present."

Â¥ Dartmouth, N.S.’s Alexander MacLeod for Light Lifting (Biblioasis), a debut short-story collection the jury called "a careful marriage of the lyric and the narrative" and "sensitive and subtle."

Â¥ Toronto’s Sarah Selecky for This Cake is for the Party (Thomas Allen Publishers), another debut short-story collection the jury described as "dry and funny, exact and exacting" and "resonant and quietly apocalyptic."

Â¥ Montreal’s Johanna Skibsrud for The Sentimentalists (Gaspereau Press), a first novel the jury described thusly: "The Sentimentalists charts the painful search by a dutiful daughter to learn – and, more important, to learn to understand – the multi-layered truth which lies at the moral core of her dying father’s life."

Â¥ Montreal’s Kathleen Winter for Annabel (House of Anansi), yet another debut novel, which the jury praised as "a beautifully told, fully-realized tale of a mysterious child gifted or cursed by a rare condition at birth."

Bergen won the Giller Prize before, in 2005, for his novel The Time In Between, while the other four writers are all relative newcomers. Last week, Winter was shortlisted for the Roger’s Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

This year, the jurors considered 98 books submitted by 38 publishing houses before choosing a longlist of 13. Notable authors that did not make the shortlist include Douglas Coupland for Player One, Michael Helm for Cities of Refuge, and Jane Urquhart for Sanctuary Line.

The winner of the $50,000 prize, which was founded in 1994 by Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife, the journalist Doris Giller, will be announced Nov. 9.