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Scotiabank Giller Prize winner Sean Michaels is photographed in Toronto, Ontario, Tuesday, November 11, 2014.Kevin Van Paassen/The Globe and Mail

Although Sean Michaels published his debut novel, Us Conductors, last April, he has been a stalwart in Canada's music and cultural community for more than a decade, since founding the influential music blog Said the Gramophone in 2003. While the blog is still going strong, his writing career is going stronger. On Monday, November 10, he was awarded the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the $100,000 that goes with it, becoming, at 32, one of the youngest winners in the prize's history and only the second-ever debut novelist to claim the annual fiction award. The next morning, Canada's newest literary star sat down with Globe Books editor Mark Medley to talk about writing, music, and what the win means for his career.

What's the first thing you remember writing?

In either first or second grade, with two of my friends, we wrote a book that I still have called The History of the Unicorn, which was the story of the first unicorn, ever, and the wizards that the unicorn encountered. There are really lovely pastel drawings. It was my first magnum opus – my only magnum opus, so far.

When did you realize you could make a living from your writing?

I went to university at McGill, and then I moved to Scotland for a few years. I got a gig working as a legal assistant, with the goal being to earn a living that leaves my head free to work on fiction on the side. I was already writing Said the Gramophone, and doing a little bit of freelancing. I moved back to Canada and got another legal-assistant job at a law firm in downtown Montreal, and after about six months of that suddenly there were some contracts coming in for the music journalism stuff that was enough to replace that part-time legal-assistant work. I remember when I was offered a monthly gig with The Guardian, I was like, If I did this I wouldn't have to go into the office every day! That happened around 2008.

How did music become such an important part of your life?

My parents love music. I grew up in a household filled with mostly classical music. My dad has a huge record collection, and records would almost always be on at home.

I'd listen to records with my late grandfather – you could give him a bar of a piece of Brahms and he knew which movement it was. I didn't have any older siblings, and I was most of the way through high school before I really found pop music, to some extent. I mean, I loved the Beatles, and I loved Aerosmith at age 12, but I wasn't a music nerd as a 14-year-old at all. I grew up in Ottawa, and there's this lovely, all-ages leftist punk scene. I was scared of those kids, and now I would have loved to be friends with them. It was toward the end of high school when I discovered indie rock. In university I started my blog and also discovered the discourse about music on the Internet. That online discourse about music really blew open the doors for me.

How does music influence your fiction?

I listen to music all the time when I'm writing. I'm not someone who writes in silence. I wrote Us Conductors listening to everything from Notorious B.I.G. to Chopin to Tim Hecker. I like to sometimes write against the music I'm listening to. So if I'm writing a peaceful, quiet, sad scene, there's something useful about listening to really assertive, loud music, to find a tension.

What are your desert-island records?

I adore Cat Power's album Moon Pix, Van Morrison's album Astral Weeks. Oh, Glenn Gould's Goldberg Variations.

Could you choose between music and literature?

Music can really illuminate your day. It can be this impossibly wonderful companion to the world. But the best writing can give you a wisdom that helps you go forth toward your grave.

How long did you spend writing Us Conductors?

About three years. It was a roller coaster. There were times when the book felt very easy. There were times during the editing process when it felt very hard. Writing about the Gulag was the hardest part of this. I did a lot of research and reading about the experience of prisoners under Stalin. I was having nightmares. There was something very uncanny about working all day at writing about the Gulags, and then waking up and having to write about the Gulags again. The experience mimicked what I was writing.

What was going through your mind as you stood on stage at the Giller ceremony, looking out over the room?

I remember the extreme pressure of the clock. We had been told we had very little time to make a speech. There was a countdown. And I knew that the remarks that I wanted to say would use all that time. So the clock was really disorienting. It was also really important for me to look at some of the people in the crowd, especially my fellow finalists. Forget the Giller, forget Scotiabank – I don't want to forget the jury – but the gift that those other finalists gave me during the past few weeks was enormous. I wanted to see them, but I essentially didn't have time to find them all in the crowd.

At the end of your acceptance speech you mentioned 'people in our little corner of culture who have behaved monstrously.' Why did you feel it was important to address this issue?

This is something very important to me, and I think important to a great many people. Many of us, in small and large ways, have allowed, or abetted, this culture of silence. Now that we're waking up to this, it's really important that we act and try to change it.

A lot has been written about the $100,000 purse. As well, in recent weeks there's been a lot of talk about the financial precariousness facing writers in Canada. What does this money allow you to do?

It allows me to work on fiction. The longer you have to keep fighting to keep your head above water as a writer, the more exhausting it gets. So I'm in the very fortunate position now of hopefully being able to spend a bit more time doing that.

Does your Giller win make you anxious to get started on the next book?

Suddenly being a writer has become easier in a bunch of ways … but I'm also kind of prepared for other parts of it to now be harder than they were. So I'm excited to go back to writing and to do what I can do next, but I also want to try hard to find my centre again. To be able to [write] from the same kind of place I've been writing all this time.

This interview has been condensed and edited.

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