So last week I attended a short and lovely ceremony announcing the Giller Awards longlist. It was so fun and beautiful and it made me feel like such a part of things.

There was only one snag. I hadn’t read any of the books. All my grad-school friends were there and none of us had read a single book, I don’t think. How embarrassing.

To add insult to injury, the Artistic Director of the Vancouver International Writers Festival went on a very flattering diatribe about our writing department and how it’s the best, most respectable in the country. He said that when he flipped through the list of authors attending his festival, he was pleased to see that a sizeable chunk of them were grads of the program. I didn’t know that. I should have known that.

In drastic reaction to my ignorance, I’ve decided, as a (self-appointed) member of the Canadian Writing community, that it’s high time I start acting like one. A writer ought to read the work of her contemporaries and so I began the Giller Prize Book Club. That way I can guilt my writing friends into doing it with me and my shame will motivate me to follow through.

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