Last night at a televised gala in Toronto, Souvankham Thammavongsa was announced as the winner of the 2025 Giller Prize, considered by many as Canada's most prestigious award for fiction. She took home the C$100,000 award for her novel Pick a Colour, published by Knopf Canada. (The novel is published by Little, Brown in the U.S.) Thammavongsa's previously won the Giller in 2020 for her short story collection How to Pronounce Knife.
The jury of judges, led by Dionne Irving, called the novel, which is about the inner life of a former boxer-turned-manicurist, "exquisite," and written in an "inimitable style that decentralizes the English language, crackling wit, and profound confidence." PW gave the novel a starred review.
There were pro-Palestinian protests this year that had interrupted the previous two year's galas, prompting Scotiabank to pull its sponsorship for the prize. While there were no protests this year, numerous authors declined to allow their books to be submitted for consideration for the prize.
Questions remain about the future of the award. Elana Rabinovitch, executive director of the Giller Foundation, said that this year's gala was sponsored by donors who chose to remain anonymous. In July, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported the Rabiniovitch has said the prize would not be able to continue unless federal funding was secured, a notion that drew criticism from the broader Canadian publishing community who feel funding should go to publishers and not pricey prizes.
