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QWF marks 20 (or 30) years of celebrating Quebec's anglo authors

However you do the math, the 2018 QWF Literary Awards Gala is a milestone for the Quebec Writers’ Federation, and for an increasingly vital scene.

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It was the end of one era and the beginning of another. Sort of.

In 1998, after transitioning from the 10-years-extant QSPELL Awards, the newly named Quebec Writers’ Federation’s QWF Literary Awards were launched. The winner in the fiction category that inaugural year couldn’t have been more appropriately iconic: Mordecai Richler, for Barney’s Version. While no one at the time could have imagined that the celebrated novel would be Richler’s last major published work, with two decades’ hindsight the choice takes on a symbolic import: the passing of the torch from one generation of Quebec writers to the next.

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“It’s a little complicated, in fact,” said Lori Schubert, QWF’s executive director and the driving force behind the awards gala since taking over the position in 2002. “As named, this is our 20th anniversary, but the awards have been around since 1988. So this year, as part of the event, we’re having a little competition, where people can team up and try to identify quotes from books that have been submitted for prizes over the past 30 years.”

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To mark the milestone, attendees at this year’s gala are invited, but not required, to sport some Roaring Twenties finery. “A headband or a feather boa for women, maybe spats for men, that kind of thing,” Schubert said.

After several years in the comparatively opulent setting of Corona Theatre in St-Henri, the gala has been back since last year for its second stint in Cabaret Lion d’Or. There’s more to the venue’s appeal than its intimacy and the across-the-board positive notices it has received from attendees and participants alike: it’s considerably cheaper to rent than the Corona, and being in a part of town where relatively few anglo writers and readers have traditionally lived and worked, it functions as a nice gesture of outreach.

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Paige Cooper is probably the consensus QWF rookie of the year. She's up for two awards on Tuesday.
Paige Cooper is probably the consensus QWF rookie of the year. She’s up for two awards on Tuesday. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf /Montreal Gazette

The slow-but-steady growth of the QWF Literary Awards mirrors, and indeed is inextricable from, the growth of the English-language writing scene in Quebec, and its willingness to celebrate itself. There have been years when coming up with three short-list items in every category was a bit of a stretch, but those occasions are fewer and further between. In certain quarters (well, in this reporter’s quarter, at least) it has even been suggested that it might be time to expand the short lists from three to four titles — not Oscars-style overkill, just enough to accommodate the local scene’s increasing vitality.

For now, growth has come in the form of categories added to the long-standing Fiction, First Book, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Young Adult and Translation. A CBC QWF Writer-in-Residence is named at the ceremony, as are winners of a newly instituted Playwriting Award. (“For writing, not for performance,” said Schubert. “We’re hopeful that it will help draw the theatre community in.”) There’s also the QWF Literary Prize for Young Writers, open to entrants aged 16 to 24, and drawing submissions largely from local high schools and CEGEPs. This year additionally sees a special tribute to the late Janet Savage Blachford, a former QWF board member who came to the attention of Montreal Gazette readers this year for finishing her fine self-published novel Blue Lake in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis.

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The QWF may soon be faced with deciding how big is too big — and more specifically in the case of the actual gala program, how long is too long.

“We’ve been near the point of considering an intermission,” Schubert acknowledged. “But honestly, we’ve yet to receive complaints that it has gone on too long. A lot of that has to do with the host, and this year we’ve got (writer and radio personality) Tommy Schnurmacher. He’s a pro. He’ll keep things moving.”

Tuesday's gala will include a tribute to former QWF board member Janet Savage Blachford, who completed her novel Blue Lake in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis.
Tuesday’s gala will include a tribute to former QWF board member Janet Savage Blachford, who completed her novel Blue Lake in the face of a terminal cancer diagnosis. Photo by Pierre Obendrauf /Montreal Gazette

Schubert probably needn’t worry: past years have shown the gala to be a fail-safe concern, its liveliness ensured by its participants and attendees. Past winners, for example, have a habit of coming back every year whether or not they’re up for another prize — a reminder that the value of awards should never be discounted. Just ask Saleema Nawaz, who won the Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction in 2013 for her novel Bone and Bread.

“It’s always thrilling to win something,” Nawaz said. “In the writing life such successes come rarely, if at all. Prizes are subjective and by no means the final word on literary merit. But they can give much-needed encouragement in a field where objective rewards are often vanishingly small.”

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In the final tally, the gala is a lot more than an occasion for glad-handing: it’s a gathering of a tribe whose members, given the solitary nature of their vocation, sometimes need a nudge, both figurative and literal, to get out of the house and mingle with their confreres—and their readers. 

“I’m grateful to live in a place with such a supportive writing community,” said Nawaz. “I lovingly dust my QWF award in its place of honour on my shelf. Well, OK, only rarely, because I’m terrified of breaking it.”

Dig out your boas and spats or their equivalents, ladies and gentlemen.

AT A GLANCE

The 2018 QWF Literary Awards Gala takes place Tuesday, Nov. 20 at 8 p.m. at Cabaret Lion d’Or, 1676 Ontario St. E. Tickets cost $25 (ceremony) to $50 (cocktail reception and ceremony), available online via eventbrite.ca. For more information on tickets and the gala, call 514-933-0878 or see qwf.org.

Rawi Hage's debut novel De Niro's Game was a double QWF winner in 2006.
Rawi Hage’s debut novel De Niro’s Game was a double QWF winner in 2006. Photo by Dave Sidaway /Montreal Gazette

WE KNEW THEM WHEN

Paige Cooper, double-shortlisted in the First Book and Fiction categories for her debut story collection Zolitude, is probably 2018’s consensus QWF rookie of the year. Regardless of what happens Tuesday night, her recognition bodes well: there have been many cases in which similar QWF nods have heralded recognition beyond Quebec’s borders. Here are a few. 

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Yann Martel

Montrealer Martel had won a Journey Prize for the title story of his debut collection The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios, but it was his 2001 QWF award for his second novel, Life of Pi, that provided the first hint of a literary phenomenon. Shortly thereafter, having been passed over for a Governor General’s Award in Canada, it won the Man Booker Prize and proceeded to sell millions on its way to a popular film adaptation and a spot on countless Books to Read Before You Die lists.

Jeffrey Moore

Moore’s Prisoner in a Red-Rose Chain, published in 1999 by the tiny Saskatchewan-based Thistledown imprint, might have gone the way of most small-press debut novels had not official recognition — first with a 1999 QWF shortlisting, and then, against all odds, with a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize for Best First Book in 2000 — brought it to international attention.

Anne Carson

While it’s difficult to pin down exactly when she established herself as one of the world’s leading contemporary poets, there’s no disputing that Carson’s 1998 QWF award for Autobiography of Red was one of her earliest laurels. Her longtime residence in the U.S. takes her out of the current QWF running; nonetheless, her impact on the local scene has been, and continues to be, indelible.

Rawi Hage

Hage’s worldwide profile for his debut novel De Niro’s Game — it won the 2008 International Dublin Literary Award — was kick-started with a double QWF win in 2006. The Lebanon-born Montrealer won in the fiction category again in 2008 for Cockroach, and is in the running this year for Beirut Hellfire Society.

ianmcgillis2@gmail.com

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