The Giller Prize deserves a better ceremony

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I love CanLit. Freak that I am, I look forward to the Scotiabank Giller Prize announcements – longlist, shortlist, winner – with actual excitement. When I woke up on Monday, one of my first thoughts was: I get to watch the Gillers tonight. (See freak, above.)

Which is why I am begging the people who run the prize to do something about the last big moment of what should be Giller glory, the televised award ceremony. The show should reflect the high standards of the creative work it is celebrating.

The Gillers, which have become (arguably) the most important Canadian literary award, were founded by the late Jack Rabinovitch, named in honour of his late wife, the literary journalist Doris Giller. The idea was to celebrate – and promote – Canadian fiction. His line from the beginning was: for the price of a meal in this town, you can buy all the books.

The price of a meal in Toronto or any other town has escalated since 1994, and don’t authors know it. Not just the five shortlisted authors, but every writer who types away in obscurity, hoping they can pay the rent this month, never mind the internet package that would allow them to watch the Giller ceremony live on CBC Gem.

Beyond the $100,000 prize for the winner (and $10,000 for each finalist), the prize comes with loads of free promotion and a boost in sales.

There is a lot of media coverage. There’s a live tour, where the nominated authors discuss their books in front of enthusiastic audiences. This is a Canadian publishing success story.

So the big finish has to be better than this.

Monday night’s broadcast was a stilted ceremony with a lot of awkward transitions and a script full of groaner jokes. Most of the lines dutifully uttered by hosts Sarah Gadon and Rupi Kaur simply did not land; even the polite laughter was uncomfortable. And Ms. Kaur’s performance of one of her poems was nearly six minutes long – longer than the segments devoted to the authors who had actually been nominated for their work.

In these live segments, each shortlisted author delivered a brief description of their book, followed by a short film about their working process (these were terrific) and then a single prerehearsed question-and-answer with one of the hosts.

And the choice of hosts was inspired: Ms. Gadon starred in the film adaptation of Miriam Toews’s novel All My Puny Sorrows, a Giller nominee in 2014, as well as the miniseries based on Margaret Atwood’s Alias Grace. She is now adapting Heather O’Neill’s Lullabies for Little Criminals. And Ms. Kaur is a superstar poet who has sold a gazillion books and could, in theory, bring younger viewers to the ceremony.

But if there were younger viewers and listeners among the nearly one million people who tuned in for even part of the show (on TV, CBC Radio One and online), I can’t imagine they would have stuck around.

I understand it’s a tight hour in which a lot has to get done, including the winner announcement and their speech, with the clock ticking down. But it could be so much more watchable.

To begin with, ditch the bad jokes. They’re not necessary. The authors are funny! Like Ms. Atwood who, in the show’s opening, talked about the prize offering “temporary but joyful alleviation of financial anxiety.”

The cutaways to the Enriched Thinking Writers’ Lounge were meant to be comedic, but someone thought it would be a good idea for host Ali Hassan to pretend he wanted to submit his memoir for a Giller, when Mr. Hassan, who is an intelligent human being who hosts CBC’s Canada Reads, obviously knows this is a fiction award. Cringe.

But the final moments were so good, I briefly forgot about everything else I had endured over the hour. When Suzette Mayr won for her novel The Sleeping Car Porter, she gave a speech that could have had anyone who was still watching in tears.

“I want to acknowledge the importance of the sleeping car porters, the men and the communities around them, who are an essential part of Canadian history, and whom I wrote about in this book,” she said. She then gave a “shout-out to my LGBTQIA2S+sisters, brothers and siblings – many of whom, like my main character, Baxter, are still too scared to come out. Or cannot come out because to do so would be too dangerous. I see you, I love you and this book is for you.”

This weekend I will buy The Sleeping Car Porter and curl up with it and be transported to another place. This is the beauty of fiction. Many people will buy this book; the other shortlisted books too. This is the beauty of the Giller Prize.

Next year is the 30th Giller. I hope the ceremony lives up to its important achievements.