{"id":176176,"date":"2025-09-28T22:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-28T22:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/176176\/"},"modified":"2025-09-28T22:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-28T22:52:10","slug":"otoniya-j-okot-bitek-the-giller-prize","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/176176\/","title":{"rendered":"Otoniya J. Okot Bitek \u2013 The Giller Prize"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Otoniya J. Okot Bitek\u2019s novel, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.penguinrandomhouse.ca\/books\/736437\/we-the-kindling-by-otoniya-j-okot-bitek\/9781039009288\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">We, The Kindling<\/a>\u00a0has been longlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize.<\/p>\n<p>Otoniya writes poetry and fiction. Her first collection, 100 Days, won the 2017 IndieFab Book of the Year Award for poetry and the 2017 Glenna Luschei Prize for African Poetry. Her second collection,\u00a0A is for Acholi, won the 2023 Dorothy Livesay Poetry Prize. Her most recent collection of poetry,\u00a0Song &amp; Dread, is published by Talonbooks. Otoniya was born in Kenya to Ugandan parents and has lived in Canada for more than three decades. Her short story \u201cGoing Home\u201d received a special mention in the 2004 Commonwealth Short Fiction Prize.\u00a0We, the Kindling\u00a0is her first novel.<\/p>\n<p>Why is it important for Canadians to read books by Canadian authors?<\/p>\n<p>Reading is important and it is a privilege to have time to read. Canadian writers, like writers from elsewhere, address issues that are important to us. I read as part of my job, but also to be exposed to the imagination of writers that invite us to think expansively. Thankfully, Canadian writers come from so many different backgrounds and have so many entry points to read from, and I\u2019m grateful for that.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s the last great book you read by a Canadian author?<\/p>\n<p>In the last year, I\u2019ve been moved by Omar El Akkad\u2019s\u00a0Some Day\u00a0Everyone Will Always Have Been Against This, and\u00a0Her First Palestinian by Saeed Teebi. I\u2019m currently reading Madeleine Thien\u2019s The Book of Records. All great books that get us thinking about this moment, about who we are, and how we orientate ourselves.<\/p>\n<p>When did you know you wanted to be a writer?<\/p>\n<p>I didn\u2019t want to be a writer. I just sucked a lot more doing anything else.<\/p>\n<p>Who\u2019s your favourite character in your longlisted book and why?<\/p>\n<p>I don\u2019t have a favorite character, but I think a lot about The Rooster Woman.<\/p>\n<p>How many drafts did you go through when writing your book?<\/p>\n<p>Several. I didn\u2019t count. Some versions of the book remain close to the original but things moved around and some sections were thoroughly rewritten. I worked on this book over many years, and I mostly wrote over the same pages instead of saving a new draft so I can\u2019t say how many drafts there were.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Otoniya J. Okot Bitek\u2019s novel, We, The Kindling\u00a0has been longlisted for the 2025 Giller Prize. Otoniya writes poetry&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":176177,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[64,63,457,134],"class_list":["post-176176","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-books","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-books","tag-entertainment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176176","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176176"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176176\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/176177"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176176"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176176"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176176"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}