Calgary Writer Suzette Mayr Wins $100,000 Giller Award for The Sleeping Car Porter

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Calgary author Suzette Meyer was announced Monday night to have won the Scotiabank-Giller Award, Canada’s highest literary award, for her novel The Sleeper Porter.

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“Today, I think I’ve officially ended my impostor syndrome feeling as a writer,” Mayer said upon accepting the award.

Mayr has described it as her background story for nearly two decades. This is an ambitious period drama that delves into racism and homophobia and requires years of deep research. This is her sixth novel.

The Giller jury praised Mayer for presenting a work of historical fiction “vividly, immediately, and eerily modern.”

“Baxter’s dreams of one day going to school and studying dentistry coexist with his secret life as a homosexual, and in Meyer’s triumphant novel, he travels from Montreal to Calgary, as well as unforgettable support. follows him in and out of the lives of the cast of . To character and finally to a beautifully expressed brilliance.” tHis jury wrote about the winning novel.

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Mayer, a professor of English at the University of Calgary, has written five other novels. Her third, Monoceros, won her the WO Mitchell Book Prize and in 2011 she was on Giller’s long list.

Poet Rupi Kaur and actor Sarah Gadon hosted the ceremony at the Four Seasons Hotel in Toronto.

of Here are the runners-up, each receiving $10,000: Kim Hu, a short story collection of lesser known monsters of the 21st century published by Coach House Books. Rawi Hage’s collection of short stories Stray Dogs (published by Knopf Canada). Tshering Yanzom Lama, We measure the Earth with our bodies, published by McClelland & Stewart. Nour Naga has her novel If Egyptians Don’t Speak English, published by Greywolf Press.

Mayer is not the first Calgarian to win this honor. Calgary-born Esi Edugyan has won her two awards for her 2011 novel Half-Blood Blues and her 2018 Washington Black. Calgary’s Will Ferguson won the award in 2012 for his novel 419.