Two authors have withdrawn from the Giller Prize jury in protest of sponsor Scotiabank’s investment in an Israeli weapons manufacturer, the Canadian Press news agency reports.
Dinaw Mengestu (All Our Names, the forthcoming Someone Like Us) and Megha Majumdar (A Burning) resigned from the judging panel for the award, given annually to a work of fiction by a Canadian author. The other jurors for the prize are journalist Noah Richler, novelist Kevin Chong, and singer Molly Johnson.
Earlier this month, a group of Canadian authors—some eligible for this year’s prize, and some previous winners—published an open letter to the Giller Foundation condemning Scotiabank’s investment in Elbit Systems, a Haifa-based defense contractor, Literary Hub reports.
“As long as the Giller Foundation continues to receive funding from ANY sponsors who are directly invested in Israel’s occupation of Palestine, it will still be complicit in genocide,” the authors wrote in the letter withdrawing their books from contention for the prize. The letter was co-signed by authors who have previously won or been shortlisted or longlisted for the prize, including winners David Bergen, Noor Naga, Sarah Bernstein, and Omar El Akkad.
In an interview with the CBC, El Akkad said, “I think of what the Palestinian poet Rasha Abdulhadi said about anything you can do to throw sand in the gears of genocide, you should do it. And in that context, trying to pressure this award to break with a company that is investing in an Israeli weapons maker makes perfect sense.”
Michael Schaub is a contributing writer.
