The month of March brings thoughts of spring and melting snow banks. While this might be reason enough to celebrate, March is also a month-long celebration of French culture and language – le Mois de la Francophonie !
Today we are shining the spotlight on French and Francophone literature awards from Canada, France and beyond. Literary awards bring fame, prestige, and sometimes a big jump in book sales. Much anticipated award announcements can shoot a title or author to stardom!
Canadian Literary Awards
Since 1959, the Governor General’s Literary Awards (administered by the Canada Council for the Arts) recognize Canada’s best books in a variety of categories both in English and French. The prize was first awarded in 1936, but Francophone authors could receive an award only if their work had been translated and published in English. Today there are categories in both languages including: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, drama, and translation.
These are some of the other notable literary awards celebrating French Canadian literature:
- Prix des libraires du Québec – Lauréats 2023 Established in 1994 this prize bases its selection criteria on more than just sales success. The aim is to reward authors whose work, writing quality and originality have struck the booksellers as remarkable.
- Prix Gilles-Corbeil – A prestigious award presented once every three years to an author for lifetime achievement. The 2022 prize was awarded to Nicole Brossard for lifetime achievements in literature as well as work in social, feminist and lesbian struggles.
- Grand Prix du livre de Montréal – Awarded to recently published works to promote excellence in literary creation and the Montreal publishing industry.
The “Big Six” awards from France
Autumn is peak book season in France when all the top literary awards are given out within days of each other. These “Big Six” award announcements make headlines across France.
- The Prix Goncourt has been the most prestigious and probably the best known award since its inception in 1903. The Académie Goncourt members meet each month at the Drouant restaurant in a private room to discuss literary matters and finalise their list. These 10 members – all highly-respected French writers – select their choice for top novel of the year.
- The Prix Renaudot is French literature’s runner-up prize and is awarded moments after the Goncourt. The Renaudot jury always has a backup book to avoid duplication.
- Prix Femina– Created in 1904 as a reaction to the male dominance of the Prix Goncourt. Infamously, one of the Goncourt members declared “pas de jupe chez nous” (“no skirts for us”). This spurred the journalists from Femina magazine into action and a new prize was formed with an all female selection jury.
- Incredibly, the Interallié Award was created by a group of bored journalists sitting around waiting for the Femina Prize to be announced. They came up with their own prize to be awarded to a novel written by (no surprise) a journalist. The best-known winner is Michel Houellebecq, the bad boy of French literature.
- Grand Prix du roman de l’Académie française – Awarded each year for an original French-language work published in the current year.
- Prix Médicis – Celebrates an author “whose fame does not yet match his talent.” Alas, the prize rarely solves this problem and most winners remain little known. Nonetheless, Québec author Kevin Lambert (2023 winner) is a rising star on the Canadian literary scene!
There are of course many other awards and francophone countries that we have not even mentioned. Let’s give the last word to a fairly new literary prize – The Africas. Since 2015, this prize has recognized an African or Afro-descendant writer of fiction highlighting a cultural, economic or historical cause relating to Africa or its diaspora.
- Stay With Me, Ayobami Adebayo Afriques 2020
- Born on a Tuesday, Elnathan John Afriques 2018
The titles highlighted in this blog article are only a small sampling of the award winning books and authors in our collections. Would like to read these works in the original text? Our french blog post is full of more suggestions of prize winning French and Francophone literature – en français! As always,
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