CBC has announced that TV personality Rick Mercer will host the 2014 Scotiabank Giller Prize gala on Monday, November 10th – he will join presenters Kim Coates, Jessica Paré and Naomi Klein on stage to celebrate the finest works in Canadian fiction for the year.
Mercer is replacing former “X” host Jian Ghomeshi, who was fired this week from the CBC in a controversial layoff that has gone public and will also go to court (Ghomeshi is suing the network for more than $50 million), as the host of the gala event. “We all recognize fans and followers are feeling dismay and confusion,” organizers wrote in a post on the Giller Prize website (as reported by the National Post). “We respect [the CBC’s] decision.”
The shortlist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize is:
The Betrayers by David Bezmozgis
Tell by Frances Itani
Us Conductors by Sean Michaels
The Girl Who Was Saturday Night by Heather O’Neill
All My Puny Sorrows by Miriam Toews
The Ever After of Ashwin Rao by Padma Viswanathan
The Scotiabank Giller Prize gala will be broadcast at 9pm on CBC Television from the Ritz-Carlton in downtown Toronto. It will also be live-streamed on CBC Books with a concurrent live chat, enabling Canadians across the country to be part of the Giller experience. With the finalists being celebrated and an author awarded the prize that night, the presenters will join the authors onstage to celebrate the year’s biggest achievements in Canadian arts and letters. An appearance on “Q” the following morning will be the first national broadcast feature interview for this year’s winner.
The six authors on this year’s shortlist , who are in the running for the $100,000 prize, were selected by a distinguished jury made up of some of the finest writers in North America and the UK: Canadian author Shauna Singh Baldwin, British novelist Justin Cartwright and American writer Francine Prose.
Photo: WENN
