|
The 2001 Giller Prize - News Press "Print" in your browser to print page. November 6, 2001 TORONTO - At a gala dinner and award ceremony that drew over 450 members of the publishing, media and arts communities, Richard B. Wright was named the 2001 winner of The Giller Prize, Canada's premier literary prize for fiction. Richard B. Wright's winning novel, Clara Callan, is a Phyllis Bruce Book, published by HarperFlamingoCanada. 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 3, 2001. Those finalists were:
Selected by a distinguished jury panel, comprised of authors David Adams Richards and Joan Clark, and journalist Robert Fulford, the finalists were chosen from 78 books submitted for consideration. Of the winning book, the jury remarked, "Clara Callan illumines, by way of a diary and letters, the inner life of an Ontario village school teacher of the 1930's when "spinster" and "respectable" meant constricted emotions and a glum existence. In this atmosphere Clara enacts her private drama of doomed adulterous love and single motherhood with stoic heroism. Running parallel with and counterpointing Clara's life is Nora's - she is the sister who got away. An understated, graceful writer who never makes a false step, Richard B.Wright is a master at revealing the small dramas that unfold in what might appear to others as an unremarkable life. In Clara Callan he has achieved an accomplished and utterly convincing novel."
|