We at carte blanche are thrilled to announce the 2021 carte blanche Prize finalists, as selected by juror, Gillian Sze.
The shortlisted writers are Helen Chau Bradley (Fiction), Noa Padawer-Blatt (Fiction), and M-X Marin (CNF)!
The carte blanche Prize is awarded once a year in recognition of an outstanding submission by a Quebec-based writer or translator.
We at carte blanche are thrilled to announced the longlist and the juror for the 2021 carte blanche prize! The winner will be announced at the 2021 QWF Awards Gala on November 24, 2021.
carte blanche is pleased to announce that Poonam Dhir has been named the recipient of the 2021 Fresh Pages Editorial Mentorship in Creative Nonfiction. Congratulations! As a poet, storyteller and [More…]
I am a big believer in lists. Grocery lists. To-do lists. Lists on phones and bits of envelopes and bills. Lists are satisfying to write, and even more satisfying to work through. But best-of lists, the kind of lists which flood journals and newspapers towards the end of each year, summarising “The 10 Best Books of 2019” or “The 100 Best Books of the 21st Century”—even though we’re only a fifth of the way through that century—are a pet peeve of mine.
“We’re thinking of moving to the country,” I told mystery writer Louise Penny when I bumped into her at the Knowlton Literary Festival in 2010, adding that my husband and I weren’t sure if it was the right thing for our writing careers. Penny was enthusiastic: “Do it,” she said, “while you can!” A few months later, we bought a 200-year-old farmhouse in the tiny hamlet of Hatley.
For Penny, living in the country proved no hindrance to her career. Her depiction of the fictional village of Three Pines and the eccentric characters who inhabit it launched her to international success. Now on the sixteenth volume of her Inspector Gamache series, she has sold over six million books worldwide.
The first year after I had a concussion was a blur. I was dead to the world for three months, going in and out of sleep, exhausted. I had vertigo and difficulties with light, sound, and language. No reading. No computers. No writing. Definitely no multitasking. I had to rest for far more hours than seemed viable and consequently had to suddenly quit a few organizations I led, with no succession plan in place. I closed my small press, or as it turned out, put it on hiatus. I simply had no choice.
As with a stroke or cancer, a traumatic brain injury can be an opportunity to reexamine one’s life and priorities.