Prize Winner

Elizabeth Hay Wins $40, 000 Book Prize
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
TORONTO (AP) -- Elizabeth Hay, a former radio journalist who long hoped to write a novel about her ''golden summer'' working in northern Canada in the 1970s, won the lucrative Scotiabank Giller Prize for her novel ''Late Nights on Air.''

''I am very thrilled and very lucky -- so lucky in fact that I'll probably be hit by a truck tomorrow,'' Hay joked as she accepted the $40,000 prize. ''It's important that I say my thank-yous now.''

The Giller Prize is considered one of the most prestigious in Canadian literature. Past winners have included such stars as Margaret Atwood, Mordecai Richler, Michael Ondaatje and Alice Munro.