How one winner is reacting to the Scotiabank Giller Prize drama

As dozens of authors pull their work out of contention for the Scotiabank Giller Prize to protest the lead sponsor's investment in an Israeli arms manufacturer, the publishing world is left wondering: what is the path forward for this country's most prestigious literary prize?

Author Omar El Akkad won the Giller Prize in 2021. He joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to talk about how he's reacting to the foundation's response, what the prize means to him now, and his hopes for the future of CanLit.

We've included some highlights below, edited for length and clarity. For the full discussion, listen and follow Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud on your favourite podcast player.

Elamin: The struggle between art and commerce is not a new thing, and we are going to talk about that in just a second. But first, can we just put into perspective this whole thing? What did winning $100,000 do for you as an author?

Omar: Winning the Giller changed my life in every way possible. The money was the least of it. Most of the money is still sitting in the bank. In fact, the most of that money that I have spent is taxes on that money…. Having the money sitting there in a bank account is a kind of stability, of course. But in terms of actually going out and buying a Maserati or something, that never happened.

The ways in which it did change my life were, first of all, it saved my career. I had this book that nobody cared about, and then suddenly everybody cared about it. Also, it gave me a kind of confidence — everything that you would expect from winning an award of that magnitude. But more than that — and this is so minor to talk about in this context, and I apologize in advance because this is such a petty thing — but that was a really good day. I was convinced Miriam Toews was going to win. I had no speech prepared. I don't know what the hell I said when I got up there, but it was this really good memory for me. And now it will forever be intertwined in this mess. We'll always be inseparable from this situation where, at least in my feeling, these folks who I thought really cared about writers, and probably will say that they care really deeply about writers, opted for this bank, and that sucks. But, you know, I'll get over it.

Elamin: I don't think that sounds petty, just for what it's worth. It sounds like you are at least a little bit in mourning of what the Giller Prize maybe represented, and it feels like it represents something different to you right now.

Omar: So here's the thing. And again, I apologize in advance for going dark.

Elamin: It's okay, man.

Omar: The last time that I talked to anybody from the Gillers, which was a few weeks ago, that morning I woke up and the first thing I saw when I turned on my computer was photographic evidence of what it looks like when a six-year-old girl starves to death. Now I have a daughter about that age, and I think you might as well.

Elamin: I do.

Omar: And I have a story like that for every single day of the last nine months…. I bring it up because this is the prism through which I have seen the world for the past nine months. And in that context, I don't really care what happens with the Gillers, right? It doesn't matter. They're going to be fine. They've got a bank supporting them. I bet you that for every author who signed that letter, there's probably ten authors who just want all of this to go away so that they can put on their nice suits and show up every fall at the Four Seasons or whatever, and continue to celebrate because it's a fun night out. I get all of that.

But from my personal perspective, I think of what the Palestinian poet Rasha Abdulhadi said about anything you can do to throw sand in the gears of genocide, you should do it. And in that context, trying to pressure this award to break with a company that is investing in an Israeli weapons maker makes perfect sense. And I still hope it happens in some form or another, but we are talking about this bizarre side drama in the world of Canadian literature that, in the grand scheme of things, feels so small.

Elamin: The most generous listener is listening to you thinking, "This is a conflicted author who's working through a lot of questions, and has kind of found his own moral threshold." The least generous listener has clocked the idea that you have most of the prize money sitting in the bank account, and he's perhaps yelling at the radio, "Omar, why haven't you given the money back?" And I don't know what you say to that person, but maybe you have an answer.

Omar: The answer I would have given to that question a few weeks ago would have been directly related to that idea of how the Giller Prize could function in a way that isn't directly related to a bank that's investing in an Israeli weapons maker.

Elamin: You're implying you'd have given some of your prize money towards…?

Omar: I mean, I personally would have given the rest of it. The answer I give you now is no, I'm not going to do that. At no point have I been asked to do that, and in fact the opposite is true. The idea of writers putting their money towards this has been particularly difficult for some of the organizers of the Giller to accept, and I think that's for good faith reasons. The other part of it is that if I'm going to give that money away, I'm not going to give it to the Gillers. I'm going to give it to somebody who is working with all those kids who've been dismembered on the other side of the planet. So, I think that argument is always going to be made, and I get it.

But I also think it's a fundamentally bad faith argument…. I don't think that the ultimate end goal of that line of questioning is to get the money back to the Gillers, or to instill some kind of moral purity on the situation. I think the end goal is to silence the person you disagree with. If I thought it worked for me, I would probably take the same tack. But it's really infuriating to try and give you a full answer to that question and not betray the confidence of these conversations we've had. There are other writers, I can tell you, who still hold out the hope for a vastly different way of getting this award to work. Unfortunately, I'm not one of them anymore, but I wish them all the luck in the world.

You can listen to the full discussion from today's show on CBC Listen or on our podcast, Commotion with Elamin Abdelmahmoud, available wherever you get your podcasts.

Interview with Omar El Akkad produced by Jess Low.