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Victoria author Steven Price a finalist for Giller Prize

TORONTO — Victoria-based author Steven Price has been named a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize. Price was nominated for Lampedusa (McClelland & Stewart), set in the Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s.
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In his new novel, Lampedusa, Steven Price wanted to explore the what-ifs and why-nots many authors feel while writing a book.

TORONTO — Victoria-based author Steven Price has been named a finalist for the Scotiabank Giller Prize.

Price was nominated for Lampedusa (McClelland & Stewart), set in the Italian aristocracy of the late 1950s.

First-time novelists Ian Williams and Megan Gail Coles were also among the finalists for the award. Organizers announced the six writers on the short list for the $100,000 honour at a Toronto event on Monday.

Williams, a Griffin Poetry Prize trustee, is nominated for Reproduction (Random House Canada), a sprawling tale of a cross-cultural family set in his hometown of Brampton, Ont.

Coles, based in Montreal and raised in Savage Cove on Newfoundland’s Great Northern Peninsula, is a contender with Small Game Hunting at the Local Coward Gun Club (House of Anansi Press), billed as a Newfoundland Gothic for the 21st century.

Previous Giller finalists in the running are Michael Crummey for The Innocents (Doubleday Canada) about two orphans fighting to survive on a craggy cove in Newfoundland, and 91Ô­´´-based Alix Ohlin for Dual Citizens (House of Anansi Press) about the bond between sisters.

Rounding out the finalists was Latvian-91Ô­´´ author and filmmaker David Bezmozgis for Immigrant City (HarperCollins Publishers), a short-story collection tracing immigrant experiences.

Two previous Giller winners on this year’s long list who didn’t make the final cut were Margaret Atwood for The Testaments, her blockbuster sequel to 1985’s The Handmaid’s Tale, and Andre Alexis for Days by Moonlight, part of his The Quincunx Cycle series of novels.

Alexis was the 2015 winner for Fifteen Dogs, while Atwood won the prize in 1996 fo Alias Grace.

The winner will be named a Toronto gala on Nov. 18, hosted by singer-songwriter and actor Jann Arden.

This year’s Giller short list was selected by a jury panel featuring 91Ô­´´ writers Donna Bailey Nurse, Randy Boyagoda and Jose Teodoro, joined by Scottish-Sierra Leonean author Aminatta Forna and Bosnian-American author Aleksandar (Sasha) Hemon.Â