The 2023 edition of the Gala du Prix des libraires du Québec was held in front of an audience of 500 people, double that of last year, at Club Soda on Thursday evening. For the first time in its history, the Prix des libraires crowned the same winner in two categories. Thus, Marie-Hélène Voyer won the Essay Quebec prizes, for The habit of ruins (Lux publisher), and Poésie Québec, for Chickweed (The People); the prizes are respectively accompanied by a grant of $5,000 from the Conseil des arts de Montréal and a grant of $3,000 offered by the Association des libraires du Québec.
It should also be noted that Geneviève Bigué, winner in the Québec Adult Comics section for Sometimes the lakes burn (Frontfroid), a prize accompanied by a $3,000 grant offered by the Association des libraires du Québec, had won the Youth Comics Prize for 6-11 year-olds as an illustrator in February for Minville Hardware (The Short Scale), by Alexandre Côté-Fournier. As for the Out of Quebec prize in the adult comics category, it was awarded to Dry cleaning (Rue de Sèvres), by Joris Mertens.
As for the Novel, news, story Quebec prize, it was Dominique Scali who distinguished herself thanks to her ambitious and imposing adventure novel. Sailors can’t swim (La Peuplade), released seven years after his first novel, In Search of New Babylon (The People, 2015). The prize earned the author a $10,000 grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Its counterpart outside Quebec was won by The gray bees (Liana Levi), by Ukrainian novelist Andrei Kurkov.
Finally, Eliane Ste-Marie, bookseller at the L’Exèdre bookstore in Trois-Rivières, won the Excellence Award from the Association des libraires du Québec and a $2,000 scholarship from the Quebec Ministry of Culture and Communications. Quebec. Each winner received a trophy from the sculptor Louis-Georges L’Écuyer. With the verve that we know for her, the columnist and novelist Catherine Ethier animated the evening, under the artistic direction of Véronique Marcotte and on the musical composition of Vincent Collard. For their part, Irdens Exantus, Pascale Montreuil, Catherine Souffront and Elkahna Talbi read extracts from the winning works. Broadcast live on the YouTube and Facebook platforms of the Association des libraires du Québec, the gala is available for catch-up on social networks.