Tonight, Johanna Skibsrud took home $50,000 by winning the ScotiaBank Giller Prize for her debut novel The Sentimentalists (Gaspereau Press, 2009), a novel that connects the flooding of an Ontario town, the Vietnam War, a trailer in North Dakota and an unfinished boat in Maine.
The Sentimentalists garnered only scant reviews, sold a few hundred copies, and remained relatively unknown until being named to the longlist this past September. Skibsrud is perhaps the most unlikely winner in Giller Prize history.
In her acceptance speech, Skibsrud thanked Giller Prize founder Jack Rabinovitch, her publisher, Gaspereau Press, her mother, friends who read early versions of the novel, and her late father, whose tales of Vietnam inspired the book. “I just can’t even imagine how proud he would have been,” she said.
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