Martine Delvaux managed to carve out a place in the prestigious list of finalists for the Médicis Prize in France, Essays category. The Quebec writer distinguished herself thanks to her book It could have been a moviepublished in September 2023 by Héliotrope editions.
The essay, which is also on the preliminary list of the Prix des Libraires du Québec, takes the form of an investigation into the life of Hollis Jeffcoat, an unknown American painter who evolved in the shadow of Joan Mitchell and Jean Paul Riopelle.
The writer therefore went through the archives, biographies, exhibition catalogues, memoirs, stories and articles and met witnesses in the hope of recovering every bit of information on the artist’s career. , filling vacant spaces both through fiction and intertextuality.
Nine other essays are part of the selection for the Medici Prize, which will be awarded on November 6.
Remember that last year, Quebec writer Kev Lambert won honors in the French novels category with May our joy remain (Heliotrope, 2022). Le Médicis — Essai had for its part been attributed to the work Proust, family novel (Robert-Laffont, 2023) by Frenchwoman Laure Murat.
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