| The Giller Award is the biggest literary prize in | | | | Clara has sold over 200,000 copies in Canada, and |
| Canada, given each year to the author whose | | | | the fact that the novel took home the Giller |
| work of fiction is deemed the most deserving by | | | | convinced publishers to release all of Wright’s |
| a panel of judges, which includes critics, journalists, | | | | previous novels again as well (he had written eight |
| and publishers. The award is generally believed to | | | | previous to Clara). |
| contribute not only to the prestige of the author | | | | Wright himself is a lifetime Ontario resident, born |
| who receives it, but also to the sales success of | | | | in Midland in 1937. He attended university at the |
| the book in question as well, although this is not | | | | Ryerson Institute of Technology in the 1950s, and |
| always the case. | | | | briefly flirted with various media positions while |
| As of 2001, St. Catharine’s, Ontario, could | | | | writing, and eventually took on a job at MacMillan |
| boast its own resident Giller prize winner when | | | | Canada, where he moved from editing to sales. |
| Richard B. Wright walked off with the award for | | | | His first commercially available book was written in |
| his hugely successful novel, Clara Callan. The novel | | | | the 1960s, and was a children’s mystery |
| is set in Canada during the years of the Great | | | | novel. |
| Depression, the main character a spinster | | | | Wright penned his first adult oriented novel during |
| schoolteacher and her vivacious and somewhat | | | | a brief sojourn out of province, when he and his |
| impractical sister Nora. Clara secretly longs for the | | | | wife moved to the Gaspe Peninsula. The |
| openness that Nora embraces, and the novel is | | | | Weekend Man had limited commercial success |
| written in the form of the sister’s letters and | | | | after its release, but today it is recognized as a |
| diaries. | | | | minor Canadian classic. |