Award-winning Canadian writer links past and present

Author Elizabeth Hay poses with the Giller Prize, Canada's richest literary award, for her novel ''Late Nights On Air'' in Toronto, November 6, 2007.

TORONTO (Reuters) - For an author whose works often examine the link between past and present, it's hardly surprising that the winner of Canada's top literary prize had a flashback to her childhood when her name was announced.

Former radio broadcaster Elizabeth Hay won the Scotiabank Giller Prize earlier this month for her fifth and most recent work of fiction, beating out some other, big-name finalists.

Throughout the night of the awards celebration, Hay said she was reminded of a time when she was around five years old and won a doll as a prize at a movie theater.

"I walked home with this fabulous doll and walked into the house and said, 'Look at what I winned'," Hay said in an interview. "So that's kind of gone down in family history. But I disgraced myself the next morning because I wrote my name in big, ballpoint letters around this poor doll's neck."

When Hay took to the Giller stage to sign an enlarged copy of her book cover, "It reminded me of the time I signed my doll," she said. "And I thought, well, I've been practicing this signature for quite a while."

Hay's "Late Nights on Air" was up against books from four other nominees, including literary heavyweights Michael Ondaatje and M.G. Vassanji, to win the Giller, Canada's richest annual award for fiction, which is presented at a gala, black-tie dinner.

The book describes the lives of a cast of characters at a small radio station in Yellowknife, in the Northwest Territories, and was inspired by Hay's own experiences living in the north when she was a radio broadcaster.

"Whenever I'm in my daily, regular life, I usually feel that a lot of things escape me and much passes me by, so when I write, I'm trying to have a second chance at reliving a time or event more fully," she said of the autobiographical influences in the book.

"Then you write about it and you spend three years constructing a book, then everything does become more real. You're able to take your small life and put it to fictional use, and use it as a starting point, in a way, for something larger."

There is a distinctly Canadian feel to Hay's works, particularly because of their geographical settings. "A Student of Weather", which was nominated for the Giller in 2000, follows a family from a farm in Saskatchewan to urban Ottawa.

Hay, the daughter of a high-school principal and a painter, who hails from small-town Ontario, said she thought "obsessively" of her native country when she lived abroad.

"I do like to explore things that are deeply personal and rooted in the past, which means, since I'm from Canada, exploring this part of the world."

Hay also documented her exploration of the country's cultural identity while she lived in New York in the non-fiction work "Captivity Tales: Canadians in New York".

"Late Nights on Air" was No. 2 on the Globe and Mail newspaper's bestseller list for fiction last week, and has been difficult for stores to keep in stock since it won the Giller.

"In the moment itself, it was just this rush of happiness. I felt this great buoyancy," Hay said of the award night.

"People have been so pleased for me, it's been great -- I had no idea I knew so many people."

(Editing by Rob Wilson)