11 Nov 2004
Toronto – At a gala dinner and award ceremony that drew nearly 500 members of the publishing, media and arts communities, Alice Munro was named the winner of The 2004 Giller Prize, Canada’s premier literary prize for fiction, now celebrating its 11th year. Munro’s winning short story collection, Runaway, is published by McClelland & Stewart. The largest annual prize for fiction in the country, The Giller Prize awards $25,000 each year to the author of the best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English. A shortlist of six finalists was announced on October 7th, 2004. Those finalists were:
Shauna Singh Baldwin for The Tiger Claw, published by Knopf Canada
Wayson Choy for All That Matters, published by Doubleday Canada
Pauline Holdstock for Beyond Measure, published by Cormorant Books
Alice Munro for Runaway, published by McClelland & Stewart/Douglas Gibson Books
Paul Quarrington for Galveston, published by Random House Canada
Miriam Toews for A Complicated Kindness, published by Knopf Canada
Selected by a distinguished jury panel comprised of authors Charlotte Gray, Alistair MacLeod and M.G. Vassanji, the panel read 94 books submitted by 38 publishers from across the country.
Of the winning book, the jury remarked: “Runaway brings us haunting stories told with unflinching honesty, in a language precise and informed, yet beautifully simple, whose meanings taunt the mind long after we have finished them. Munro’s characters are locally Canadian, remarkably ordinary, and at the same time startlingly universal; she dissects them to the core of their existential selves to reveal individuals in whom, disturbingly, we begin to see ourselves.”
Alice Munro has published ten previous books, including Lives of Girls and Women, and Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage. Munro has been awarded the W.H. Smith Award in the U.K., and in the U.S., the National Book Critics Circle Award and the PEN/Malamud Award for Excellence in Short Fiction, among others. In Canada, she has won three Governor General’s Awards, The Giller Prize, and the Trillium Book Award, among numerous others. Alice Munro and her husband divide their time between Clinton, Ontario and Comox, British Columbia.
For the second year in a row, Mary Walsh of This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Open Book hosted the gala ceremony. Six distinguished Canadians - Shelagh Rogers, Cara Pifko, Jim Cuddy, Clifton Joseph, Measha Brueggergosman and Gordon Pinsent - took part in the ceremony. Each presented one of the shortlisted authors with a leather-bound copy of their book. Prior to the announcement of the winner, Margaret Atwood paid a special tribute to the legendary publisher Jack McClelland who passed away earlier this year.
The award ceremony was broadcast this year live on CBC Television.
The Giller Prize was founded by Jack Rabinovitch in 1994 in honour of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller.
Publicity Contact:
Elana Rabinovitch
416.275.5418