The shortlist for the $100,000 Scotiabank Giller Prize was announced at an event in Toronto this morning. A jury of Canadian and international authors – Samantha Harvey‚ Jeet Heer‚ Lawrence Hill‚ Alan Warner‚ and Kathleen Winter – selected the six titles from a longlist of 12, after reading 161 submissions from 69 publisher imprints.

Five of the six nominated authors are women, with the exception being Gary Barwin for Yiddish for Pirates. Three of the titles are published by Penguin Random House Canada, which, last year, did not have a finalist in the race.

The six shortlisted authors are:

• Mona Awad, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl (Penguin Canada)
• Gary Barwin, Yiddish for Pirates (Random House Canada)
• Emma Donoghue, The Wonder (HarperCollins)
• Catherine Leroux; Lazer Lederhendler, trans., The Party Wall (Biblioasis)
• Madeleine Thien, Do Not Say We Have Nothing (Knopf Canada)
• Zoe Whittall, The Best Kind of People (House of Anansi)

The finalists each receive a $10,000 purse and will participate in a special cross-country reading series visiting Halifax on Oct. 14‚ Vancouver on Oct. 17‚ and Toronto on Nov. 6. The prize winner will be announced at an awards ceremony‚ to be aired on CBC TV on Nov. 7.