A year after protesters interrupted the Giller Prize award ceremony to highlight lead sponsor Scotiabank’s stake in an Israeli weapons manufacturer, the literary community is gearing up for the ceremony again — but it’ll 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 bearing signs that read “Scotiabank funds genocide.”
Although the same cloud of controversy hangs over the ceremony this year, the show won’t be broadcast live. Instead, the event will be taped by CBC and aired hours later.
When asked by Canadian Press, neither the Giller Foundation nor the TV network attributed the change to the protests, noting they’ve made the same move for 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 authors signed a letter calling for the charges against them to be dropped.
The list included many writers who had previously won or been shortlisted for the Giller.
“There isn’t really a way I can rationalize my way out of this if I feel that what’s happening is a genocide and I feel that it’s wrong,” said Thea Lim, a past Giller finalist who signed the letter early on and has continued to align with advocacy group No Arms in the Arts.
Authors pull their books from consideration
Lim and others are protesting the Giller Foundation’s funders, in particular Scotiabank, due to its stake in Israeli arms manufacturer Elbit Systems. No Arms in the Arts is also protesting funders Indigo, for its CEO’s charity that supports Israeli Defense Force 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 question of “sway,” she said. Her position in the CanLit scene — one she credits in part to her debut novel An Ocean of Minutes being on the Giller short list in 2018 — meant she might have some influence on an issue she cared deeply about.
“It also gave me a feeling of having created a space for other authors to be able to do that,” Lim said. “Because there’s a lot of risk, and I think we’re seeing that very clearly.”
Dozens of authors pulled their books from consideration for this year’s Giller Prize, including some who went on to nab spots on other notable short lists, 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 fresh call from CanLit Responds for the Giller Prize to divest from Scotiabank has received more than 300 signatories as of Monday, all of whom pledged to abstain from submitting works to the prize or participating in any events related to it until demands are met.
Scotiabank reduces stake in Elbit
There are signs the sustained pressure from this collective action is having an impact.
Scotiabank’s subsidiary has since sold some of its stake in Elbit Systems. Securities filings show the bank’s 1832 Asset Management had about 642,000 shares in Elbit at the end of the second quarter of this year, worth about $113 million US. That’s down from about 2,237,000 shares, worth $467.4 million US, a year earlier.
Scotiabank has declined to comment on the protests, saying divestments were based on “investment merit” and made independently of the bank itself. But Israeli business publication Globes reported Elbit’s CEO attributed the partial divestment — and a correlated temporary drop in share price — to antiwar pressure in Canada.
While the Giller Foundation hasn’t cut ties with the big bank altogether, it did remove Scotiabank from the name of its prize.
Giller executive director Elana Rabinovitch, whose late father founded the award some 30 years ago to honour his deceased wife, said in an email Saturday that the Giller’s contract with Scotiabank expires at the end of next year and that the organization would announce the next steps when it’s ready.
Rabinovitch also questioned the methods of boycotters.
“Nobody could take issue with writers saying what they think, writing what they believe and protesting what they might see as unfair,” she said. “But boycotting, censoring and blacklisting writers seems to me antithetical 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 Sunday that equating boycotts to censorship is “ludicrous” and said that literary prizes and institutions are the ones with the power to blacklist authors.
As dozens of authors pull out of contention for the Scotiabank Giller prize – to protest the lead sponsor’s investment in an Israeli arms manufacturer, we ask what the path forward is for this country’s most prestigious literary prize. Former Giller Prize winner and author Omar El Akkad joins Elamin to weigh in.
Shortlisted authors torn amid boycott
The winner of the Giller will receive $100,000, while the finalists receive $10,000. For translated works, the money is split, with 70 per cent going to the author and 30 per cent to the translator.
Some of this year’s shortlisted authors are still grappling 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 has to be said has to be said so meticulously, because it matters so much, and so I’m not ready yet to talk about it,” said Anne Michaels, a finalist for her novel Held.
Similarly, Anne Fleming, whose novel Curiosities 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 do feel comfortable saying is I think that, broadly speaking, as a culture, we’re in the middle of an important shake-up about where funding for the arts comes from. It’s not just the Giller. It extends far beyond that, and it’s not just here.”
Other shortlisted writers this year include Conor Kerr for Prairie Edge, Deepa Rajagopalan for the short story collection Peacocks of Instagram and Eric Chacour for his novel What I Know About You, translated from the original French by Pablo Strauss.
