Canadian writers David Bergen, Camilla Gibb and Lorna Goodison will get to pick the winner of this year's Giller Prize, Canada's richest literary award for fiction, organizers revealed Monday.

Toronto businessman Jack Rabinovitch, who founded the prestigious Canadian honour in memory of his wife, literary journalist Doris Giller, announced the three-member jury in a statement Monday.

The annual $40,000 prize rewards the author of a book of fiction or short fiction published in English and deemed the year's best by the judges. Past winners include Alice Munro, M.G. Vassanji, Austin Clarke, Rohinton Mistry, Margaret Atwood and Mordecai Richler.

For the B.C.-born, Winnipeg-based Bergen, the appointment shifts him to the other side of the award, which he won in 2005 for his novel The Time in Between.

The year Bergen won his Giller, British-born, Toronto-raised author Gibb was among his competition after being nominated for her novel Sweetness in the Belly. A writer of novels and short fiction like Bergen, Gibb serves as vice-president of writers' rights group PEN Canada.

Kingston, Jamaica-born Goodison is an acclaimed author of poetry and prose, as well as a painter and lecturer. The Toronto-based writer's honours include winning the Commonwealth Poetry Prize and Jamaica's Musgrave Gold Medal.

Organizers will announce a long list of semifinalists for the 2007 Giller Prize in September, with a short list following on Oct. 9. The lavish, black-tie Giller Prize gala will take place Nov. 6.