Anne Michaels, one of Canada’s finest writers, won the Giller Prize on Monday night. She had been shortlisted twice before, and her winning novel, Held – also a Booker Prize finalist – explores, in fragments, the intergenerational effects of war. “Held is a novel that floats,” the jury said in its citation, noting Ms. Michaels’s “mastery of word and situations.”
This is not what history will remember about this year’s event.
The Giller is sponsored by Scotiabank (which was dropped from the prize name but remains the lead sponsor), which holds a particularly large stake in an Israeli arms manufacturer. As such, the prize has become a cultural ground zero for Canadian pro-Palestinian protesters with open letters, social media disparagement and real-world demonstrations.
Some eligible writers did not submit their work. Some past winners urged the Giller to break with Scotiabank. Two jurors pulled out over the issue. After revealing its longlist, the Giller issued a statement “asking for the aggressive and offensive online attacks against nominated authors to stop.”
In recent days, Madeleine Thien, who won the $100,000 prize in 2016 for her terrific novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing, asked that her name and image be removed from the Giller website and other materials. In a letter she posted to social media, she said she had offered to raise money from previous Giller winners to fund the prize, rather than accept money from Scotiabank. “I wanted this year’s nominated writers and their books to be protected.” Since then, she wrote, she has been attacked on social media by Giller executive director Elana Rabinovitch.
It has gotten very ugly. Another Canadian writer, Stephen Marche, argued in a Globe and Mail essay that the opposition is connected to the “fat, Jewish name” of the prize’s late founder, Jack Rabinovitch.
The troubles were acknowledged, tactfully, at the event. “This has been a year of change, division and instability in the arts,” Ms. Rabinovitch said, to warm support. “However, I remain emboldened by my father Jack’s singular vision for creating this prize for the recognition and celebration of Canadian fiction.” Ian Williams, who won in 2019, opened the broadcast. He said “the world has changed significantly since the prize was handed out last year. And we’re all to various degrees tense, confused, hurt, even disappointed with each other.”
In a departure from previous years, the ceremony was not aired live, after last year’s broadcast was interrupted by protesters. Security was heightened, and guests were not told of the gala’s location until the day of the event.
Outside the venue, protesters yelled “shame” as attendees arrived, calling some of them “monsters in suits,” the Toronto Star reported.
The anger over the war in Gaza is understandable. It seems less morally clear to make this particular prize, the authors who were honoured for their work and those who showed up to celebrate it the monsters.
“Everything I write is a form of witness – against war, indifference, against amnesia of every sort,” Ms. Michaels said when she accepted the prize. She said she believes “when writer and reader meet each other’s gaze on the page, there is the possibility that something can be mended.” She called for unity in the arts.
She posted part of the speech to social media. There, she was attacked, accused of gloating “over the corpses of murdered Palestinians,” for instance. Her statement was called garbage, masturbatory, a word salad. She was accused of having blood on her hands. On what should have been one of the proudest nights of her life, Ms. Michaels was publicly shamed.
Her speech was no doubt painstakingly crafted (although declaring “the dead can read” may not have been the wisest sentiment to include). Then again, one suspects it wouldn’t have mattered what she said.
Ms. Michaels did not do the usual media interviews that follow the win. Ahead of the event, she told the Canadian Press she was not ready to discuss the controversy: “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.”
At a charged moment in a social-media age when saying not exactly the right thing can sic the mob on you, who can blame her? After all, Ms. Michaels spends years crafting spectacular sentences with literary precision.
At the same time, who can blame the writers acting in good faith who feel this is their best way to register their opposition to a horrible war?
The prize is meant to celebrate Canadian literature. Its impact has been extraordinary. Now it is tainted, as is Ms. Michaels’s win.
It’s certainly not the worst thing happening in the world right now. But it really is a shame.