2 Johanna Skibsrud
Success never happens overnight, but fame often does. You can be successful in relative obscurity and then
suddenly one day everybody knows your name, et voilà, you're famous. That's what happened last November
for Montreal-based poet and novelist Johanna Skibsrud when she won the Scotiabank Giller Prize for her first novel, The Sentimentalists. At
30, she is the youngest writer ever to have won the prestigious award. The prize money and the surge in book sales (often referred to as the “Giller
effect”) should easily enable the gifted young writer to concentrate fully on her next novel.
The challenging, somewhat abstract novel that so impressed the Giller jury last year was inspired by her father who, in 2003, told her of his experiences
in the Vietnam War. The book connects that generation-defining war with the flooding of an Ontario town, a trailer in North Dakota and an
unfinished boat in Maine. It's about childhood memories, family history and a daughter's struggle with family mythology.
Photo: Kristin Skibsrud Ross
|
