Essayist and editor Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher takes over from Aurélie Lanctôt as head of Freedom. She will complete the tandem, which also includes co-director Rosalie Lavoie, in order to pursue the mission of the literary and political review.
“I’m really proud to join the team,” says the new co-director cheerfully. It is a magazine that I have always loved, I have been a reader for a long time, a collaborator from time to time. […] Review Freedom played an important role in my training, it was through her that I learned to love literary essays. »
Nothing more coherent for Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher than landing at the direction of the periodical where “all her families” meet. She is referring here to literature, a field in which she studied and evolved. But also to the political and social ideas that rub shoulders there and that are dear to him.
“For me, literature can be involved in everything. Review Freedom, it is precisely a place of risk-taking and true creation. We are asked to reflect, to go further than the expected thought. […] I want it to remain a daring magazine that is free to talk about all subjects, even the most taboo,” continues this great defender of freedom of expression.
She also says she admires the work begun by Rosalie Lavoie and Aurélie Lanctôt, who took over the journal four years ago with the ambition of broadening its horizons. In addition to preserving the tradition of a socially committed word coupled with a literary and artistic sensitivity, the magazine now makes more room for current topics: feminism, ecology, issues around racism, etc. . The duo also sought to publish new feathers that are little read in traditional literary spheres.
By taking the place of the author and columnist at the To have to Aurélie Lanctôt – who announced her departure in February, wishing to devote more time to her doctorate – Valérie Lefebvre-Faucher intends to continue on this path of change.
If the new duo is overflowing with ideas and ambition, great challenges await them. The pandemic has weakened the periodical, whose bookstore sales have fluctuated a lot over the past two years. Rosalie Lavoie is all the same reassuring, “the magazine is doing relatively well” in such a context. “You should also know that nothing is ever won in the world of magazines, it’s constant, tireless work. »
The sinews of war will be to attract ever more subscribers. ” Those are [eux]with the subsidies, which allow us stability, independence too, because we are less at the mercy of the market, of the tastes of the day, and can thus deal with subjects that are close to our hearts”, she adds, convinced that ” Freedom still has many good years ahead of it! “.
Founded in 1959 by a group of intellectuals, including Jacques Godbout, Fernand Ouellette, Jean Filiatrault and Michel Van Schendel, the journal Freedom is published four times a year.