Giller prize: Finalist Miriam Toews reads from her nominated novel
The Manitoba-born author is in the running for the $100K literary prize for her novel All My Puny Sorrows
Miriam Toews is one of six celebrated Canadian writers in the running for the $100K Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Toews is in contention for All My Puny Sorrows, a bittersweet novel about sisterhood, mental illness and assisted suicide. Toews drew on raw personal experience to pen the emotional story. Both her father and sister committed suicide after their own struggles with depression. The difficult subject matter makes for "an interesting book to celebrate," she admits.
"[My mother and I] would have preferred, obviously, that there had never been a need to write this book —that this book didn't even exist—but the reality is there was a need to write it, and it does exist."
The novel more than exists. In fact, it won $25,000 Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize Tuesday night in Toronto.
Watch Toews read an excerpt from her award-winning, Giller-nominated novel in the video above.
The winners will be announced Monday in a gala hosted by Rick Mercer in Toronto.
Watch the broadcast at 9 p.m. (10 p.m. AT /10:30 NT) on CBC Television and livestreamed on CBC Books.