Quebec at the Paris Book Festival | It’s a departure… and an arrival

(Paris) “You are in the best position, trust me,” French Minister of Culture Rachida Dati said Thursday evening to the crowd gathered in the Quebec Pavilion at the Paris Book Festival which will be held at the Grand Palais Éphémère until Sunday.

That’s pretty true. Mazette is very pretty, this wooden section dedicated to the literature of Quebec, the guest country of honor, with a breathtaking view of the Eiffel Tower. We can guess that many visitors wanting to photograph it will come across a vast selection of Quebec books at the same time, and this traffic can only benefit us, after crossing a multitude of kiosks of French and European publishing houses, as in all French-speaking book fairs.

However, the public was not yet invited on Thursday, which was the inauguration evening, with dignitaries and guests, including Mathieu Lacombe, Minister of Culture and Communications of Quebec. Despite everything, we were stepping on each other’s toes, so what will it be like with the visitors, we wonder! Rachida Dati said she was happy to inaugurate this pavilion in her district, in the presence of her Quebec counterpart, who received as a gift a copy of a short letter from Charles de Gaulle to the general of the armies, in which he criticizes the use of English words when we should use French words at all times according to him, revealing well in advance an irritation with the Anglomania of the French which has discouraged many Quebecers for a long time.

We learned the content of this letter because Dany Laferrière insisted that it be read to us, forcing the two ministers to return to the microphone, which gave rise to a funny moment. “As they say in Quebec, we wanted to hear it, this “host” of a letter,” he then told those who had missed it.

It’s very special to see so many writers from Quebec gathered in Paris for this event, all a little jet-lagged like me. And since the French know how to entertain and are generous with free wine, you have to be careful to avoid a hangover. Some had arrived in advance, others the same morning. I met the publisher and poet of Mémoire d’encrier Rodney Saint-Éloi at the Montreal airport – this man who devotes himself to his house lives in airports – and I was on the same flight as Patrick Senécal, who was asked for a photo by an admirer while we were in line for boarding. It reminded me why I was going to Paris: it’s because you’re popular at home that you arouse interest elsewhere. Sometimes you have to be a prophet in your country.

The poet Hélène Dorion, whose collection My forests is on the French baccalaureate program (a first not only for a Quebecer, but also for a living author), is launching a three-month tour because she is in demand everywhere, even in Australia, she told me. André Marois arrived from the Quais du polar festival in Lyon, where he signed his books with Dennis Lehane. Michel Jean took the train from Burgundy after a tour in Germany and Austria.

But no one is naive in this celebration, because the proposal to put Quebec in the spotlight at the Paris Book Festival came quite at the last minute, I was told behind the scenes for weeks. Nonetheless, the momentum is there, and we will take it. The teams from Québec Édition and the National Association of Book Publishers (ANEL) worked hard to make all this happen.

In any case, they have been building these bridges for years, and Olivier Gougeon, general director of the Montreal Book Fair, wanted to tip his hat to them when we spoke.

Of course, the 42 Quebec writers of the official delegation will shine brightly in the coming days, but behind them, there is the hard work of all the actors of the Quebec book chain who are only pursuing a patient, but solid conquest, which gives results.

There are plenty of tips and activities on the sidelines of the Paris Book Festival, which contributes to the excitement. I don’t know where to turn anymore, authors are invited everywhere. Thursday morning, it was at the French Academy where Alain Farah would have revealed family ties with Amin Maalouf; there was a production meeting at the newspaper Release for the special writers’ notebook which appears this Friday, and in the afternoon, I took part in a visit to the superb Sainte-Geneviève library, in the company of Marie Hélène Poitras, Alain Beaulieu, Patrick Senécal and Michel Duchesne, where the exhibition is presented Quebec in Parisin collaboration with the Gaston-Miron library, which illustrates the links between Quebec and France since Samuel de Champlain.

Wednesday evening, I was at a launch of Héliotrope at the bookstore Le Compt des Lettres on Boulevard Saint-Marcel, the publishing house of Kevin Lambert who offered this week to the show The big bookstore an impressive rant that went viral on social networks. However, it will be at the Quebec Book Fair, which takes place at the same time as the Paris Book Festival.

The proof of the vitality of our literature is that the programming in Quebec will not suffer that much from the small bleeding of feathers who have gone to represent us in France.

Olga Duhamel-Noyer and Florence Noyer, this fiery couple behind Héliotrope, explained to me that they wanted to make the jump to France to preserve the editorial cohesion of their house. At this launch, we revealed the latest titles by Martine Delvaux, André Marois, Vincent Brault and Olga, who is herself a writer. On site, there were representatives (because the majority were women) of almost everything related to pocket publishing in France, a very important area. Interest in Quebec literature is real, according to Marie Lannurien of the literary agency #Bam, who works in particular for the houses Alto, La Peuplade, Héliotrope and Les Herbes rouge.

She even notes an acceleration; we want “keb” in the catalogs. What fascinates are the themes, the subject, a freedom and a diversity of words in this corner of the Americas.

It is this diversity that also pleases Dominique Fortier and Denise Desautels – who was part of the Quebec delegation in Paris in 1999, the last time that Quebec was the guest of honor. I can’t believe it, but Dominique and Denise had never met, they will participate together in a discussion with Larry Tremblay at the Paris Book Festival. This type of meeting was close to the heart of Jean-Baptiste Passé, general director of the event, who did not want us to stay in his gang or in his corner, entrusting activities to Quebecers like Claudia Larochelle, pushing the dialogue between writers from home and abroad – even I agreed to host a discussion, with Éric Chacour, Kim Thúy and Hemley Boum.

By the time you read this, I will have purchased the Liberation of writers around the corner because I’m curious, but the real adventure will begin with the arrival of the French public at the Grand Palais Éphémère. In all these festivities, we must never forget the most important thing: the people who read. It is for them that we write.