Nova Scotia author awarded Giller prize
November 25, 2025 3:08 PM
When an author wins the Giller Prize for their work, their career changes with it. Johanna Skibsrub has experienced this firsthand as her book The Sentimentalists has gone from being published by a small Nova Scotia press, to garnering demand from across North America virtually overnight.
Johanna Skibsrud’s win has drawn a substantial amount of media attention and not just over how praise-worthy her writing is. The book may be the best of Canadian literature but there are not any bookstores with a copy of the book on their shelves.
According to The Globe and Mail, The Sentimentalists was rejected by several of Canada’s larger publishing houses before the Gaspereau Press published a small run of 800 books. The book itself is a focus on a woman’s quest to get to know her father, a Vietnam War veteran.
The Scotiabank Giller Prize was awarded in a gala ceremony on Nov. 9. The Giller Prize was established in 1994 and is one of Canada’s premiere literary awards.
Jeanette Lynes, an English professor at StFX spoke with the Xaverian on the importance of the Giller Prize to the career of budding author.
“For writers of fiction, the Scotiabank Giller Prize has probably become the most coveted prize in the country, though of course there are others such as the Governor General’s Award. The Giller has become a direct pipeline to celebrity, and to win it is a ‘career-making’ accomplishment.”
Lynes has experience with the Giller Prize as she has had her own book, The Factory Voices, longlisted for the award in 2009.
“We live in an ‘award culture’. I’m not sure this is a good thing but there are so many writers in this country now and people lead such busy lives that many readers depend on award juries to sift through the many books being published and tell them what to read.”
The lack of availability of The Sentimentalists is calling into question the market forces that shape the way consumers choose their books.
People have become accustomed to the latest literary gem being available the day it is released in every chain bookstore in North America or being a click on the overnight shipping button away from being on the coffee table.
Gaspereau Press, located in Kentville, Nova Scotia, is a small press that publishes around 1,000 books a week. A mass-market book could potentially sell tens of thousands of books weekly.
Last week, the demand for The Sentamentalists was slightly alleviated as the trade paperback rights were sold to a larger press with the capacity to put the books on store shelves and into the hands of eager readers.
While a hardcopy of the book may not have been available, Indigo’s Kobo website listed The Sentimentalists as one of the top selling e-books in Canada.
This could be seen as either an undermining of the traditional power of Canada’s publishing houses which hold a large amount of sway over which books make it onto highly coveted bookstore shelf space.