A protestor is escorted off the stage during the Scotiabank Giller Prize ceremony in Toronto in November, 2023. There were 145 submissions for Giller consideration last year.Rob Gillies/The Associated Press
The Scotiabank Giller Prize said Wednesday that it would retain its title sponsor, just hours after 15 authors said they would ask their publishers not to submit their books to the prize this year in protest of that sponsorship.
A letter signed by the authors asked for prize organizers to cut ties with partners affiliated with the Israeli military and to pressure the Bank of Nova Scotia to divest a subsidiary’s stake in Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. It comes after months of pushback from the literary community since demonstrators were arrested for disrupting last November’s Giller gala over the Elbit investment, including a 2,000-signature letter in support of the demonstrators.
Giller executive director Elana Rabinovitch said in a statement that the organization’s decision was made after a thorough review that also included “deep consultation” with the literary sector.
“We have seen firsthand the positive impact our partnership has had on Giller Prize winners, nominees and the future generations of writers inspired by the work of the foundation,” she wrote, referring to the Giller Foundation, which runs the prize. “While we appreciate the range of views that have been shared, the foundation is not a political tool.”
She added that Scotiabank’s sponsorship contract ends after the 2025 prize but declined to confirm whether it would renegotiate for a longer term or identify who her team spoke with in making that decision.
The Ethiopian-American novelist Dinaw Mengestu, who last week warned the award was in peril over the Elbit connection, also said late Wednesday that he would leave this year’s Giller jury over its decision to stay with Scotiabank. “The foundation has shown it has no desire to even engage with the questions posed by its relationship with Scotiabank, or the impact that relationship has on writers and the prize,” he said in an e-mail.
The authors withdrawing from consideration for the prize, meanwhile, wrote that “we cannot abide our work being used to provide cover for sponsors actively investing in arms funding and Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians.”
The Scotiabank Giller Prize is worth $100,000 and historically has provided a massive boost to its winners’ careers. Signatories to the letter include Behind You author Catherine Hernandez, The Beauty of Us author Farzana Doctor and Wild Houses author Colin Barrett. Five past Giller nominees have also signed the letter: André Forget, Aimee Wall, finalists Noor Naga and Shani Mootoo and winner David Bergen.
Past Giller Prize winners on the future of the prize
Publishing houses ultimately decide which books they will submit for Giller consideration, so some of the authors withdrawing their books this year may not have ultimately been put forward by their publishers –though at least one, Sydney Hegele’s Bird Suit, was planned to be nominated by Invisible Publishing, its publisher Norm Nehmetallah said. There were 145 submissions for Giller consideration last year.
The letter takes a harder stand than previous pressure campaigns against the Giller in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, which until now have focused mostly on the Scotiabank subsidiary’s Elbit stake. The authors also ask the Giller Foundation to “cut ties with all funders directly invested in Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine.”
That includes Canada’s biggest bookstore operator, Indigo, which is controlled by Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman, the founders of the HESEG Foundation, which funds scholarships for former Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The Azrieli Foundation made the list for numerous reasons, the letter says, including its late founder’s involvement with the Zionist paramilitary group Haganah.
(Amazon-owned audiobook company Audible was also on the list because of Amazon’s ties to tech company Palantir, but Audible said Wednesday that its contract with the Giller Prize ended last year.)
Representatives for Indigo and the Azrieli Foundation did not respond to requests for comment Wednesday.
While most Canadian authors don’t have the option of pulling their books from the country’s biggest bookstore chain, Indigo, without serious harm to their careers, “we have to find spaces where we can put pressure,” such as by signing this letter, Ms. Doctor said. “We have to use the leverage of our labour, our books, to opt out where we can.”
Ms. Hernandez, whose previous book Scarborough was shortlisted for numerous literary awards and Canada Reads, said in an e-mail, “It’s a shame that I even have to consider the distribution of my books because of a corporation’s complicity in genocide.” She added: “Do you shut the hell up for the promise of fame or financial stability? Or do you do as I am doing now and speak up, knowing you risk your livelihood and future as an artist?”
The letter campaign was organized by CanLit Responds, a group affiliated with No Arms in the Arts, whose branches have spearheaded other recent efforts to push back against Scotiabank-sponsored events because of the bank subsidiary’s stake in Elbit. They pushed back against the Hot Docs documentary film festival and canvassed potential exhibitors at this year’s Contact Photography Festival; nearly a tenth of them pulled out from the latter. (Scotiabank stopped funding Contact at the end of this year’s festival for unrelated reasons.)
With Gaza’s health authority reporting more than 38,000 Palestinians dead since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last October, artists around the world have protested corporate sponsors of arts events with ties to the Israeli military.
Elbit manufactures products such as military drones and artillery ammunition. Scotiabank subsidiary 1832 Asset Management was its largest foreign shareholder until at least the middle of last year, but has been gradually divesting its stake, which sat at 2.5 per cent at the end of March, securities filings show.
“If the foundation is keeping Scotiabank as its partner, one can only hope and assume that it is because Scotiabank has fully divested itself of Elbit stock,” Ms. Mootoo, a four-time Giller nominee, said. (Scotiabank did not respond to a comment request.)
“If Scotiabank has not fully divested, then this response from the Giller Foundation is sheer arrogance, and a display of disdain for everything that literature and the arts is about, and also a huge insult to the writers the Foundation purports to support,” Ms. Mootoo continued. “They serve only themselves.”
Asked about the Scotiabank pushback last week, Ms. Rabinovitch told The Globe and Mail: “We ask that people not construe our silence for endorsement of the status quo. Systems take time to dismantle.”
In response to the sponsorship continuation, CanLit Responds organizer Jody Chan said: “Their renewed commitment to Scotiabank today proves that their eight months of silence means exactly that: a tacit endorsement of Israel’s ongoing genocide in Palestine.”
With a report from Brad Wheeler