Three Canadians Shortlisted for Major Lit Awards

CanLit could strike it rich this year, with one novel up for the IMPAC Literary Award and two more up for the Orange Prize.

Three Canadian authors are up for two of the biggest literary prizes on the planet this year. Michael Crummey's Galore, a modern-day retelling of Jonah and the whale, was one of 10 books named as finalists for the International IMPAC Literary Award, which, as the world's richest prize for a single work of fiction, is worth $157,000. Kathleen Winter's novel Annabel, about a child born a hermaphrodite, and Emma Donoghue's Room, a thriller about a boy who has spent his whole life in a single room, were both shortlisted for the Orange Prize for Fiction, which awards about $50,000 to the best novel by a woman in the English-speaking world each year.