Jury comments

“This unsettling book presents an unsparing autopsy of arbitrary mental constructions and how they operate. In this profoundly human book, the author explores a multitude of themes, including that of real and ‘chosen’ families, exclusion, politics, and issues of gender and queer existence. The central metaphor – the garbage of Beirut to signify trauma – lends structure to this hybrid book.”

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Photo credit: Surah Field-Green

Jury comments

“This unclassifiable book, magnificently written, fosters a dialogue between different traditions, in an approach that’s both comparative and intertextual. Between essay and autobiography, the author pays tribute to poetry and to his own thought process by delving into various works where each voice participates in a powerful polyphonic ensemble. “Sept proses sur la poésie” also gives expression to a learned knowledge that challenges our assumptions concerning the power of literature.”
 
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Photo credit: Benoit Aquin

Jury comments

“A warm contemporary portrait of the Côte-des-Neiges and Notre-Dame-de-Grâce neighbourhoods and the Lebanese-Syrian community into which the author-narrator inserts himself. In this first-person narrative, the author explores fundamental issues of religion, racism and family conflict. Skillful reminiscences lend the characters a multidimensional aspect. Everything plays out on a day of marriage, the setting for this sensitive novel that pushes forward at a breakneck pace.”
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Photo credit: Justine Latour

Jury comments 
 
“ The author revisits the historical novel with this story set in Montréal’s Golden Square Mile during the 19th century. Against a background of banality- and convention-defying feminism, and steeped in an atmosphere of magical realism, this epic work, through its queer/lesbian characters, explores a joyful world in which the characters’ given names echo those of well-known literary and historical figures.”

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Photo credit: Julie Artacho

Jury comments

“In this novel about everyday life, the author gives voice to those who do not have one and to the workers who built Montréal, skillfully pairing different language registers. The protagonist participates in this social, family and historical fresco, and evolves through the different periods that marked the city’s history and the man’s existence. The circular narrative does its part to make Morel a demanding work.”

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Photo credit: Justine Latour

Jury comments

“In this experimental collection, the structure of language is constantly called into question. The project of deconstructing and reconstructing memory reveals intergenerational traumas, the heritage of parents, and the desire to break the cycle of violence. Poems, fragments of collages and photos colour the author’s existence. A formal work of exceptional quality.”
 
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“The author’s narrative poetry wades into the dark waters of disease and resilience. Her raw and direct writing, bearing the hallmarks of spoken word, recounts the tale of a child with a spinal cord tumour. Where once she found solace under the watchful eye of her parents, today she uses writing to heal her wounds. A collection about kinship, humility and courage that never gives in to victimization.”
 
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Photo credit: Éva-Maude TC

Jury comments

“After the death of her husband, haunted by the memory of a Japanese woman she fell in love with at Expo 67, the protagonist returns to Japan to relive the ultimate love story. The author’s limpid writing style, devoid of artifice, makes this novel a hymn to freedom from a resolutely feminist perspective, one that deconstructs received ideas about happiness, between past and present.”

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Photo credit: Joëlle Péloquin

Jury comments

“This troubling collection, with profound accents on the subject of silence and the unspoken words that inhabit us, is characterized by the author’s concise, intimate and precise writing, which draws on both poetic and philosophical registers. Integrity and empathy are at the heart of this internal monologue, which does not hesitate to resort to anecdotes to immerse the reader in a profound reflection that inevitably veers into the universal.”

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Photo credit: Sylvie Readman

Jury comments

“Straddling the line between prose and verse, essay and autobiography, the author looks at the creative process, maternity, and her relationship with Chinese culture. Entering into a constant dialogue with an 8th century Chinese poem, the mother and writer invites us to reflect upon two realities that are sometimes difficult to reconcile. Her expansive, generous writing leads readers to question the origins that shape our existence.”
 
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Photo credit: Nadia Zheng