Authors pull books from Giller Prize consideration over sponsors’ ties to Israeli interests

Fifteen authors said they are withdrawing their most recent books from consideration for the 2024 Scotiabank Giller Prize in an open letter released online Wednesday.

The authors say they will pull their eligible works until Giller organizers comply with their requests, which include pressing their title sponsor to divest itself of a subsidiary’s stake in Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems, and severing connections to other partners affiliated with the country’s military efforts.

“As authors, we cannot abide our work being used to provide cover for sponsors actively investing in arms funding and Israel’s ongoing genocide of Palestinians,” they wrote.

The Scotiabank Giller Prize is worth $100,000 and historically has provided a massive boost to its winners’ careers. Signatories to the letter include Behind You author Catherine Hernandez, The Beauty of Us author Farzana Doctor and Wild Houses author Colin Barrett. Five past Giller nominees have also signed the letter: André Forget, Aimee Wall, finalists Noor Naga and Shani Mootoo and winner David Bergen.

Past Giller Prize winners on the future of the prize

Publishing houses ultimately decide which books they will submit for Giller consideration, so some of the authors withdrawing their books this year may not have ultimately been put forward by their publishers. There were 145 submissions for Giller consideration last year.

The letter takes a harder stand than previous pressure campaigns against the Giller in the wake of the Israel-Hamas war, which until now have focused mostly on the Scotiabank subsidiary’s Elbit stake. The authors also ask the Giller Foundation, which runs the prize, to “cut ties with all funders directly invested in Israel’s occupation and genocide in Palestine.”

That includes Canada’s biggest bookstore operator, Indigo, which is controlled by Gerald Schwartz and Heather Reisman, the founders of the HESEG Foundation, which funds scholarships for former Israel Defense Forces soldiers. The Amazon-owned audiobook company Audible is also on the list because of Amazon’s cloud-services partnership with Palantir, which Bloomberg reported has supplied tools to the Israeli military. The Azrieli Foundation made the list for numerous reasons, the letter says, including its late founder’s involvement with the Zionist paramilitary group Haganah.

Representatives for the Giller Foundation, Indigo, Audible and the Azrieli Foundation did not immediately respond to requests for comment Wednesday.

“As writers, what power do we have to affect this industry? We have to use the leverage of our labour, our books, to opt out where we can,” Doctor said. Not being considered for the Giller “has to be a smaller concern for me than a genocide.”

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While most Canadian authors don’t have the option of pulling their books from Indigo and Amazon, by far the country’s most prominent booksellers, without serious harm to their careers, “we have to find spaces where we can put pressure,” Doctor said. So while she will not stop selling her books there, she said, signing the letter allowed her to apply that pressure.

The new campaign was organized by Canlit Responds, a group affiliated with No Arms in the Arts, whose branches have spearheaded other recent efforts to push back against the Bank of Nova Scotia-sponsored events because of the bank’s stake in Elbit. They have held counterprogramming to the Hot Docs documentary film festival and canvassed potential exhibitors at this year’s Contact Photography Festival; nearly a tenth of them pulled out from the latter. (Scotiabank stopped funding Contact at the end of this year’s festival for unrelated reasons.)

With Gaza’s health authority reporting more than 38,000 Palestinians dead since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last October, artists around the world have protested corporate sponsors of arts events with ties to the Israeli military. Earlier this year, British investment management company Baillie Gifford withdrew its sponsorship from numerous literary festivals after being criticized for its investments in fossil-fuel and Israel-linked companies.

From November 2023: Several charged after Scotiabank Giller Prize gala interrupted during televised bash

Elbit is one of Israel’s biggest defence companies, manufacturing products such as military drones and artillery ammunition. Scotiabank subsidiary 1832 Asset Management was its largest foreign shareholder until at least the middle of last year, owning 5.06 per cent of the company, but securities filings show it has been gradually divesting its stake, which sat at 2.5 per cent at the end of March.

Last week, Giller executive director Elana Rabinovitch told The Globe and Mail: “We have been working hard for some time now on a solution that will support the foundation, the prize and all authors, which will be shared publicly shortly.” She continued: “We ask that people not construe our silence for endorsement of the status quo. Systems take time to dismantle.”

The Canlit Responds letter also criticizes the arrest of demonstrators protesting the Elbit investment at last November’s Giller gala.