The 2022 Booksellers’ Awards gala was held Wednesday evening at Club Soda in front of 250 people. Bearing the title of the column she signed in the magazine Freedom during three years, corsair girls (Les éditions du remue-ménage), by Camille Toffoli, co-founder of the feminist bookstore L’Euguélionne, won the bet in the Quebec Essay category. The prize is accompanied by a $5,000 grant from the Conseil des arts de Montréal.
First collection of Camille Readman Prud’homme, When I say nothing I still think (L’Oie de Cravan) won in the Quebec Poetry category; the award is accompanied by a $3,000 scholarship from the Montreal Poetry Festival.
On the comic side, it’s The little astronaut (La Pastèque), an autofiction masterpiece by Jean-Paul Eid, which won acclaim; the award is accompanied by a $3,000 scholarship from the Association des libraires du Québec (ALQ).
First French-language autofiction novel written by a trans woman in Quebec, The daughter of herself (Marchand de Feuilles), by Gabrielle Boulianne-Tremblay, won the Roman-Nouvelles-Récit Québécois prize; the prize is accompanied by a $10,000 grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec (CALQ). The International Association for Quebec Studies (AIEQ) offers the winner the opportunity to promote her book in one of the foreign countries where she has members.
House trophies
The prizes outside Quebec were respectively awarded in the Comics and Novel-News-Story categories to Sleeping Woods René.e (Sarbacane), first album by Frenchwoman Elene Usdin, and Our part of the night (From the Basement), first book by Argentine Mariana Enriquez.
Finally, Billy Robinson, bookseller at the Librairie de Verdun in Montreal, received the Excellence Award from the Association des libraires du Québec and a $2,000 scholarship from the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications. All the winners received a trophy from the sculptor Louis-Georges L’Écuyer.
Broadcast live on ALQ platforms and now available on its networks, the gala evening was hosted by actress Émilie Bibeau. Charles Buckell-Robertson, Bruno Marcil, Pascale Montpetit and Catherine Souffront for their part read excerpts from the finalist works, while the singer-songwriter William Papillon took charge of the musical component.