Increase in Prize Money among Plans to Highlight 2008 Celebration

    TORONTO, April 1 /CNW/ - Jack Rabinovitch, founder of the Scotiabank
Giller Prize, is pleased to announce the jury for the 2008 Scotiabank Giller
Prize. They are: acclaimed and award-winning author Margaret Atwood; Liberal
MP, Foreign Affairs critic and author Bob Rae; and renowned international
journalist, professor and author Colm Toibin. Two thousand and eight marks the
15th anniversary of the prize.

    ((xx)Media note: high-res photos of the jury are available at
    www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca(xx))

    Margaret Atwood is the author of more than 40 books of fiction, poetry,
and critical essays. In addition to the Giller Prize, Alias Grace won the
Premio Mondello in Italy, and was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the
Governor General's Award, the Orange Prize, and the International IMPAC Dublin
Literary Award. Her subsequent novel, The Blind Assassin, won the Booker Prize
in 2000, and, in addition to becoming an international bestseller, was voted
Time Magazine's No.1 Best Book of the Year. Oryx and Crake was nominated for
numerous national and international prizes, including the Giller and the Man
Booker prizes. Margaret Atwood's most recent book of fiction is Moral Disorder
and her first book of poetry in more than a decade, The Door, was published in
September 2007. She lives in Toronto with writer Graeme Gibson.
    Bob Rae is the new Liberal MP for Toronto Centre, having won a decisive
by-election victory on March 17. A Rhodes scholar and recipient of the Order
of Canada, Rae was Premier of Ontario from 1990 to 1995, and a well known
lawyer at Goodmans LLP from 1996 to 2008. He has written several reports and
three books: the national bestseller From Protest to Power; The Three
Questions, shortlisted for the Donner Prize; and Canada in the Balance. Rae is
a well-known supporter of the arts in Canada, chairing the Toronto Symphony
Orchestra and the Royal Conservatory of Music, as well as a strong advocate of
free speech. In 1992, months after a fatwa was issued against Salman Rushdie
by the fundamentalist regime in Iran, Rae hosted Rushdie at a PEN benefit in
Toronto, becoming the first international politician to share a stage with the
writer. Bob Rae is married to Arlene Perly Rae and lives in Toronto.
    Colm Toibin was born in Ireland in 1955. He studied at University College
Dublin and worked as a journalist and editor in Dublin in the 1980s. His first
novel The South, published in 1990, won the Irish Times/Aer Lingus Prize and
was shortlisted for the Whitbread First Novel Award. His other novels include
The Story of the Night (1996), which won the Ferro-Grumley Award for the best
gay novel published in the US that year and The Master (2004), which won the
Dublin IMPAC Prize, the LA Times novel of the year and the Prix de Meilleur
Livre. His first collection of short stories, Mothers and Sons (2006) won the
first Edge Hill Prize for the best book of stories published in Britain that
year. Toibin is a regular contributor to the London Review of Books and the
New York Review of Books and has taught literature and creative writing at the
New School for Social Research in New York, the University of Texas at Austin,
and Stanford University. Colm Toibin lives in Dublin.
    This year, the purse for the Scotiabank Giller Prize will grow from
$50,000 to $70,000, with $50,000 going to the winner and $5,000 to each
finalist.
    The 2008 Scotiabank Giller Prize longlist will be announced in September.
This year's shortlist will be announced at a press conference in Toronto on
Tuesday, October 7. The winner will be named at a black-tie dinner and awards
ceremony at Toronto's Four Seasons Hotel on Tuesday, November 11, 2008.
    The 2007 submission package is now available at
www.scotiabankgillerprize.ca/guidelines.htm.

    The Scotiabank Giller Prize awards $50,000 annually to the author of the
best Canadian novel or short story collection published in English and $5,000
to each of the finalists. The award was established in 1994 by Toronto
businessman Jack Rabinovitch in honour of his late wife, literary journalist
Doris Giller. The Prize is now in its 15th year.