No Arms in the Arts and CanLit Responds have ended the Giller Prize boycott after demands were met
More than 500 authors and publishing industry workers boycotted the literary organization due to its sponsors’ ties to the Israeli military
A Giller Prize boycott that was launched in 2024 by No Arms in the Arts and CanLit Responds has ended, according to a press release published by CanLit Responds today.
“The demands of the boycott have been successfully met, and the boycott is lifted,” the release said.
The boycott began in response to the literary organization’s partnerships with companies invested in the Israeli military. Scotiabank, the Giller’s long-time lead sponsor, previously held a major stake in Elbit Systems, an Israeli weapons manufacturer. The boycott also objected to partnerships with Indigo Books, whose CEO, Heather Reisman, co-founded a charity that provides scholarships to former soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces, and the Azrieli Foundation, a minority shareholder of the Azrieli Group, which holds a stake in Bank Leumi. (Bank Leumi appears on a United Nations Human Rights Office list of businesses involved with Israeli settlements causing displacement of Palestinians.)
The announcement stated that the Giller’s executive director, Elana Rabinovitch, recently confirmed that the organization has ended its sponsorship agreements with Indigo and the Azrieli Foundation. These severed ties come after the organization ended its agreement with Scotiabank last year, following pressure from over 500 authors and members of the publishing industry, who refused to submit books for prize consideration or participate in related events or promotion until the Giller dropped those sponsors.
“This is a victory for collective action over individual gain,” Kyo Maclear, an author and one of the Boycott Giller signatories said in the statement. “Over 500 of my fellow authors and book workers have used their voices and public platforms to show that human solidarity will always be more powerful and creative than profit and war, and that genocide- and Apartheid-invested sponsors have no place in our literary community.”
Giller Prize organizers have so far not commented on the boycott ending.
The press release said a boycott would resume if replacement sponsors are found to hold similar investments. “We will be watching to see who the Giller’s new funders are,” it said. “We will not accept a return to a genocidal status quo.”
Related: Five minutes with 2025 Giller winner Souvankham Thammavongsa
Carly Lewis is a journalist whose work has appeared in the New York Times and the New York Times Magazine, Vanity Fair, Wired, Interview Magazine, Pitchfork, Elle, and Maclean’s, where she is a contributing editor. Her work has been recognized by the National Magazine Awards and the Digital Publishing Awards. She reports on city life, culture—including what people do online—politics, art and crime. She received the Dave Greber Freelance Writers Award for “The Murder of Ashley Wadsworth,” an investigative feature about a Canadian teenager who was killed by a man she met on social media, published by Maclean’s.
