TORONTO - Alice Munro, Douglas Coupland and Annabel Lyon are among the authors vying for the Rogers Writers' Trust Fiction Prize tonight.
The $25,000 prize will be handed out at Toronto's Isabel Bader Theatre and cap off Canada's lucrative literary-award season.
Munro is in the running for her short story collection "Too Much Happiness."
Coupland is nominated for "Generation A," while Lyon is in contention for her debut novel, "The Golden Mean."
Other finalists include Nicole Brossard for "Fences in Breathing," translated by Susanne de Lotbiniere-Harwood, and Andrew Steinmetz for "Eva's Threepenny Theatre."
The Writers' Trust of Canada is a charitable organization that awards almost $150,000 in various categories, including another $25,000 to a non-fiction author.
Each finalist for the fiction and non-fiction prizes receives $2,500.
This is Lyon's third and last chance at a major literary prize this fall, after failing to nab the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Governor General's Literary Award.
Munro removed her name from contention for the Giller, but was up for the Governor General's award and also lost out.
She previously won the Writers' Trust award for 2004's "Runaway."
Winnipeg native Miriam Toews, who won the Writers' Trust award last year for "The Flying Troutmans," was on the jury for this year's prize, along with writers R.M. Vaughan and Marina Endicott.
The three judges read more than 140 books over a period of six months earlier this year.
