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Writer Ian Williams, winner of the 2019 Scotiabank Giller Prize and an assistant professor in UBC's creative writing program, will be joining the first Giller Master Panels series. Photo: Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
> The Scroll
Giller Prize Launches Master Panels, a Webinar Series on Writing and Publishing in Canada
/ BY Kim Honey / February 11th, 2021
The Giller Prize is kicking off a new, free, monthly webinar series called Master Panels next week that features authors, jurors, literary agents and publishing experts in conversation on timely and relevant topics in the Canadian literary world.
The first session is scheduled for Feb. 16 at 7 p.m. when author, journalist and essayist Cecil Foster will moderate a panel on the experiences of Black authors in the Canadian publishing world during Black History Month.
He will be joined by a star-studded cast of panellists including the 2019 winner of the Scotiabank Giller Prize, Ian Williams, who took home the $100,000 cheque for his debut novel, Reproduction, as well as 2021 jury chair Zalika Reid-Benta, author of a collection of short stories, Frying Plantain, that was long-listed for the Giller in 2019, literary agent and Braided Skin author Chelene Knight, and renowned writer and University of Toronto scholar, Rinaldo Walcott, the author of On Property and a forthcoming book, Long Emancipation: Moving Towards Black Freedom.
Future Giller Master Panels are planned around International Women’s Day (March), How to Get Published in Canada (April), Asian Heritage Month (May), National Indigenous History Month (June), Let’s Celebrate Canada (July) and What It Means to Be a Juror (August).
Moderators and panellists will be chosen from past winners, long- and short-list nominees, jurors, thought leaders and other publishing industry experts.
Businessman and philanthropist Jack Rabinovitch founded the Giller Prize, the richest literary award in Canada, in 1994 in memory of his late wife, literary journalist Doris Giller, who died of cancer in 1993. Rabinovitch died in 2017, and their daughter, Elana Rabinovitch, is executive director.