Tonight Bravo is going to be presenting the prestigious Giller Prize and it's all LIVE! Sit on the edge of your seat and wait to hear who's the top dog of Canlit this year. Chew your nails. Twist your hair. Flip the pages. And wait to find out who's going to win $25,000 clams! The Giller's been around since 1994. Jack Rabinovitch started the prize to honour the memory of his late wife Doris Giller, an accomplished book editor and great lover of literature. Margaret Atwood, Alistair MacLeod and Jane Urquhart are the members of the five-star jury.

Just in case you forgot, here's the short list of the finalists. We can thank Bravo and the publishers for the following concise descriptive passages:

Burridge Unbound: Alan Cumyn (McClelland & Stewart): Bill Burridge survives torture at the hands of terrorists in the South Pacific to return home to Ottawa, where he throws himself singlemindedly into building a human rights organization to stand watch over the world's most troubled areas. After two years he is drawn back to Santa Irene, to serve on a Truth Commission investigating past atrocities. He becomes enmeshed in a world of betrayal and shifting loyalties, where nothing is as it seems.

A Student of Weather: Elizabeth Hay (McClelland & Stewart): From some accidents of love and weather we never quite recover. At the worst of the Prairie dust bowl of the 1930s, a young man appears out of a blizzard and alters the lives of two sisters. His disarming presence in a family adept at making do throws into relief a rivalry that sets the stage for all that follows in a narrative spanning just over thirty years. The two sisters: Lucinda, beautiful, fastidious, and reserved; and her younger sister, bold, homely Norma Joyce, tricky and tenacious, at first a strange, dark self-possessed child, later a woman who learns something of the redemptive nature of art.

Anil's Ghost: Michael Ondaatje (McClelland & Stewart): The time is our own time. The place is Sri Lanka, the island nation off the southern tip of India, a country formerly known as Ceylon, forced into the late twentieth century by the ravages of civil war and the consequences of a country divided against itself. Into this maelstorm steps a young woman called Anil Tissera. She is a forensic anthropologist sent by an international human rights group to work with local officials to discover the source of the organized campaigns of murder engulfing the island. What follows is a novel about love, family, loss the unknown enemy and the quest to unlock the hidden past.

Mercy Among The Children: David Adams Richards (Doubleday Canada): The story of Sydney Henderson and his son Lyle. As a young man, Sydney believing he has accidentally killed a friend, makes a pact with God vowing to never harm another if the friend's life is spared and the boy walks away unharmed. Later, tragedy strikes when a small boy is accidentally killed and Sydney is accused of the crime. While Sydney refuses to defend himself and his family, Lyle adopts a more aggressive strategy and it is left to Lyle to decide what the legacy of his father's pact will be.

Monkey Beach: Eden Robinson (Alfred A. Knopf Canada): Set amidst the long, cool shadows of B.C.'s Rocky Mountains, Monkey Beach is the story of a family on the edge of heartbreak. This is a novel which reminds us that places, as much as people, have stories to tell. Seventeen-year-old Jimmy Hill, ambitious and handsome, is the pride of the village. Jimmy shows little interest in courtship - until he falls in love with Karaoke, tough as nails and the village beauty. But their young romance is cut short by the news of a horrifying accident at sea and Jimmy's mysterious disappearance. Monkey Beach is a story about childhood and the pain of growing older, a tale of family grief and redemption.

The Trade: Fred Stenson (Douglas & McIntyre): Written between the lines of recorded history, The Trade tells the story of Edward Harriott, a Hudson's Bay Company clerk on the North Saskatchewan River; his Metis cousin Margaret; Harriott's friend Chief Factor One Pound One; and Jimmy Jock Bird, a former-Governor's Metis son. It's 1822. The Hudson's Bay Company, swollen by a merger with its bitter rival, the North West Company, is about to exercise its uncontested monopoly over the lands drained by Hudson Bay. Here is a story that traces how European culture tried to root itself in this anarchic place.

So grab your popcorn and curl up for a great night of cultural hobnobbing. That's the Giller on Bravo at 9 pm ET.

Opermania: You know me and opera. I just can't get enough. Well Arraymusic is launching a new opera by Robert W. Stevenson called Nostalgia. I couldn't get nostalgic about it, because I could find much infor in cyberspace. Here's all that I found. "Nostalgia is a new opera charting the life and struggles of a working class family and the dynamics or their relationships." The opera stars Michael Donovan, Stuart Howe, Joel Katz, Shari Saunders and Eric Shaw.

Image Nation: Acclaimed video maker Darlene Naponse is going to be in Vancouver the next couple of days to take part in the Image Nation Aboriginal Film and Video Festival. An Ojibway writer and video artist, Naponse alternates between narrative and poetic styles of fiction (her own "Rez Style Filmmaking"). Yet the message of her work is always the same. The artist wants to "consistently addresses different aspects of physical and cultural violence including rape, domestic abuse, depression, poverty and colonialism."

If you'd like more information about the festival please contact Jen Weih in Exhibitions (604)872-8667. Darlene Naponse's video screening and artist talk is tonight at 8 p.m. The screening will include videos by Shelley Niro and Rene Meshake. There's a sliding scale for admittance, with tickets running between $3 to $8.