Writers have been coming out against companies that fund awards, with serious implications for the books industry

On a Monday evening in mid-November, dozens of demonstrators gathered outside Toronto’s Park Hyatt Hotel, where the Giller prize gala was taking place. The following night, in London, the Baillie Gifford nonfiction prize dinner closed with this year’s winner Richard Flanagan announcing that he would be deferring receipt of the prize money in protest. And two days later, more than a hundred authors – Isabella Hammad, Andrew O’Hagan and Maaza Mengiste among them – signed an open letter condemning the “deep-rooted hypocrisy” of the JCB prize for literature.

These awards have big purses – the Giller winner gets 100,000 Canadian dollars, the Baillie Gifford £50,000, the JCB 2.5m rupees – and can be career-makers. But the past year has seen so much pushback against the corporate sponsors behind the prizes that winning these awards is no longer a straightforwardly celebratory moment for an author.