Giller Prize to feature 2024 longlisted writers in online book club
The 2025 edition of the Giller Book Club will run from January until May
The Giller Prize is back with its monthly book club series.
This year's edition of the Giller Book Club features the authors of the 2024 longlist in conversation with notable writers, critics, past jury members and academics. The interviews will be streamed live and recorded. They will run from January until May.
You can find out more about the conversations and register at the Giller Prize website. Check out the full schedule below, including details on each book.
Curiosities by Anne Fleming
Fleming will discuss Curiosities with Kevin Chong on Jan. 21.
Curiosities centres around an amateur historian who discovers an obscure memoir from 1600s England that explores a love that could not be explained in those times. Weaving together different fictional accounts, the novel tells the life stories of Joan and Thomasina, the only two survivors of a village ravaged by the plague, and how they eventually find each other again. Thomasina, now Tom, navigates the world in boy's clothes and as a male, but faces a struggle when discovered, naked, by a member of the clergy.
Fleming is an author based in Victoria. Her books include Pool-Hopping and Other Stories, which was shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award for Fiction and the Ethel Wilson Fiction Prize. She has also written a middle-grade novel, The Goat, which was a Junior Library Guild and White Ravens selection.
Peacocks of Instagram by Deepa Rajagopalan
Rajagopalan will discuss Peacocks of Instagram with Sindya Bhanoo on Feb. 18.
The collection of stories in Peacocks of Instagram provides a tapestry of the Indian diaspora. Tales of revenge, love, desire and family explore the intense ramifications of privilege, or lack thereof. Coffee shop and hotel housekeeping employees, engineers and children show us all of themselves, flaws and everything.
Rajagopalan was the 2021 RBC/PEN Canada New Voices Award winner. Born to Indian parents in Saudi Arabia, she has lived across India, the United States and Canada. Her previous writing has appeared in publications such as the Bristol Short Story Prize Anthology, the New Quarterly, Room and Arc. Rajagopalan now lives and works in Toronto.
A Way to Be Happy by Caroline Adderson
Adderson will discuss A Way to Be Happy with Rachel Rose on Mar. 5.
A Way to Be Happy is a short story collection that follows various characters as they try to find happiness. Ranging from mundane to extraordinary, the stories feature everything from a pair of addicts robbing parties to fund their sobriety to a Russian hitman dealing with an illness and reliving his past.
Adderson is the Vancouver-based author of five novels, including The Sky is Falling, Ellen in Pieces and A Russian Sister. She has also published two short story collections, including the 1993 Governor General's Literary Award finalist Bad Imaginings. Adderson's awards include three B.C. Book Prizes, a National Magazine Award Gold Medal for Fiction. She has received the 2006 Marian Engel Award for mid-career achievement. She is also a three-time winner of the CBC Literary Prizes.
Death by a Thousand Cuts by Shashi Bhat
Bhat will discuss Death by a Thousand Cuts with Karma Brown on March 18.
Death by a Thousand Cuts traces the funny, honest and difficult parts of womanhood. From a writer whose ex published a book about their breakup to the confession wrought by a Reddit post, these stories probe rage, loneliness, bodily autonomy and these women's relationships with themselves just as much as those around them.
Bhat's previous work includes The Family Took Shape, a finalist for the Thomas Raddall Atlantic Fiction Award and The Most Precious Substance on Earth, which was also a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for fiction in 2022. Her short stories won the Writers' Trust/McClelland & Stewart Journey Prize and she has been shortlisted for a National Magazine Award and the RBC Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. Bhat lives in New Westminster, B.C.
Bad Land by Corinna Chong
Chong will discuss Bad Land with Drew Hayden Taylor on April 3.
In Bad Land, Regina's brother shows up on her doorstep with his six-year-old daughter after seven years, interrupting her quiet loner life. The longer they stay, the clearer it becomes to Regina that something terrible has happened — and once the secret is revealed, they're sent on a fraught journey from Alberta to the coast of B.C.
Originally from Calgary, Chong lives in Kelowna, B.C. and teaches English and fine arts at Okanagan College. She published her first novel, Belinda's Rings, in 2013. In 2023, she published the short story collection The Whole Animal which includes Kids in Kindergarten, the winner of the 2021 CBC Short Story Prize.
This Strange Eventful History by Claire Messud
Messud will discuss This Strange Eventful History with Susan Swan on April 16.
This Strange Eventful History follows a French Algerian family over seven decades, from 1940 to 2010. The book tells the story of the Cassars as they are separated in the Second World War, flee Algeria after it declares independence and try to build their lives elsewhere, with the social and political upheaval of their recent past fresh in their minds. As she grows up and wants to understand her family's history, Chloe, the youngest member of the family, convinces her parents and grandparents that sharing this part of them will bring them peace.
This Strange Eventful History was also longlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
Messud is a Canadian American author with French Algerian roots. Her books include The Emperor's Children, which was longlisted for the Booker in 2006, and When the World Was Steady and The Hunters, which were both finalists for the PEN/Faulkner Award. She has won Guggenheim and Radcliffe Fellowships and the Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She lives in Cambridge, Mass.
The Cure for Drowning by Loghan Paylor
Paylor will discuss The Cure for Drowning with Wayne Grady on April 30.
Kit McNair was born Kathleen to an Irish farming family in Ontario and, a tomboy in boy's clothes, doesn't fit in with the expectations of a farmgirl set out for them. When Rebekah, a German-Canadian doctor's daughter comes to town, she, Kit and Kit's older brother Landon find themselves in a love triangle which tears their families apart. All three of them separate and join different war efforts but all eventually return home — and they'll have to move forward from their challenging and storied past.
Paylor is an Ontario-born author currently based in Abbotsford, B.C. They have an MA in creative writing from the University of British Columbia and their short fiction and essays have previously appeared in publications including Room and Prairie Fire. The Cure for Drowning is their debut novel.
In Winter I Get Up at Night by Jane Urquhart
Urquhart will discuss In Winter I Get Up at Night with Charlotte Gray on May 14.
In Winter I Get Up at Night tells the story of music teacher Emer McConnell who lives in rural Saskatchewan. One day, as she heads to work in the early morning, she takes a trip down memory lane, taking us on her life's journey, from the prairie storm that left her in a children's ward when she was 11 to family secrets and distant love affairs.
Urquhart is a novelist and poet. In 2005, she was made an officer of the Order of Canada. In 1994, she received the Marian Engel Award, now known as Writers' Trust Engel/Findley Award. Her debut, The Whirlpool, received Le prix du meilleur livre étranger (Best Foreign Book Award) in France. The 1993 speculative fiction novel Away won the Trillium Award, was a finalist for the prestigious International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was a contender on Canada Reads 2013, when it was defended by Charlotte Gray.
Held by Anne Michaels
Michaels will discuss Held with Noah Richler on a date TBD.
Weaving in historical figures and events, the mysterious, generations-spanning novel Held begins on a First World War battlefield near the River Aisne in 1917, where John lies in the falling snow, unable to move or feel his legs. When he returns home to North Yorkshire with life-changing injuries, he reopens his photography business in an effort to move on with his life. But the past proves harder to escape than he thought and John is haunted by ghosts that begin to surface in his photos with messages he struggles to decipher.
Held was also shortlisted for the 2024 Booker Prize.
Michaels is the winner of the Orange Prize for Fiction, the Guardian Fiction Prize, the Commonwealth Poetry Prize, the Trillium Book Award and a Guggenheim Fellowship. She has been shortlisted for the Governor General's Literary Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize and the Giller Prize.
