Previous Giller winner Ian Williams on navigating the tensions in CanLit

One of the biggest prizes for Canadian literature, the Giller Prize, was awarded yesterday.

While Anne Michaels won for her novel, Held, pro-Palestinian demonstrators gathered outside the gala to protest the Giller Foundation and its lead sponsor, Scotiabank. 

Today on Commotion, past winner Ian Williams joins host Elamin Abdelmahmoud to reflect on the divisions and discontent in Canadian literature, and why conversation is the key to a way forward.

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: Let's start with the wider picture. We were both at the Gillers last night. What was it like for you, being in that room?

Ian: Yes. I spent the whole day anxious about it, and conflicted, and unsure about what's going to happen…. It was really hard. I really couldn't quite concentrate on anything else because, you know, when you believe across divisions, right, and you're really being pulled emotionally in two directions, and you want both things to be true and to coexist, but very few people seem to want that? It was rough. How did you feel?

Elamin: I think some degree of the same feelings. But also I want to say that when we were there, you were the only person that I saw who said, can we take a moment and go talk to the protesters outside? And so you stepped outside of the Giller gala where it was happening, and then you walked outside and you spoke to some protesters. What was that conversation like? What did you hear when you went outside?

Ian: I felt like I was in a bit of a bubble up there…. We knew something was happening outside, and why imagine it if we could kind of see it? Actually see what people were thinking and feeling and all of that. So, yeah, a couple of us went down. I was not prepared for my reaction.

It was really moving to see the small group of writers and friends there, chanting and protesting and handing out pamphlets. I had no comment at the time. I was just in my feelings, and my eyes kind of welled up. People there said, "You don't have to go back in. You can join us," and a small chant erupted like, "Join us." And I was like, I don't respond to that. Right?

Elamin: Talk to me about the welling up. What do you think was happening when you were having that emotional reaction to being outside? 

Ian: Well, as a novelist, this is a familiar story: a small group of people against a very large power. And on one side, you've got people who have framed their fight as a moral cause, and setting that against decadence and all of that. I don't think that's an accurate portrayal, but it falls nicely into a kind of story that we tell ourselves about the underdog.

Elamin: You were wearing a tuxedo. There are people outside. The image sort of exactly looks like that, right?

Ian: Right. So there's that. But I mean, I did go back in, and this is it. So the chant went from like, "Join us." And when I did go back in, the chant went back to, "Shame."... It hurts, particularly, from your own community, right? I mean, they were saying "shame" before, but when the resurgence is as you're leaving there, and they're saying "shame" to you for going back in, I'm like, no, that's not it either. You know? It's not, "Join us, and if you don't join us, then it's shame on you."

My usefulness to you is not simply a matter of holding your position exactly, and when I don't then it crosses over to I've become enemy again. For a moment, Elamin, there's a possibility that I could be an ally in a way that was recognizable to the group. And when I didn't do that to their satisfaction, again I became the enemy. And I am not. Those people are still my friends. We could still have teas and coffees together. But the rhetoric of it was an all-or-nothing kind of situation.

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 Ian Williams produced by Jess Low.