The Quebec Writers’ Federation has announced the winners of its annual literary awards. Six prizes of $3,000 each were presented at a gala in Montreal on Nov. 5.

The Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction was presented to David Homel for his novel The Teardown (Véhicule Press). The novel is about a mid-career freelance journalist who sets out to reinvent himself by covering the refugee crisis in Eastern Europe. The Concordia University First Book Prize went to Lindsay Nixon for nîtisânak (Metonymy Press), a mixed-medium collection of narrative art that centres the author’s Indigenous and queer identity.

The Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction went to Susan Doherty for The Ghost Garden: Inside the Lives of Schizophrenia’s Feared and Forgotten (Random House Canada). The jury commended Doherty for pursuing “a subject so misunderstood and indistinct.”

The QWF Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature was presented to Raquel Rivera for Yipee’s Gold Mountain (Red Deer Press). The Western follows the friendship between a Chinese ex-railway labourer and an aspiring Apache warrior.

The A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry went to Tess Liem for her collection Obits. (Coach House Books). The Cole Foundation Prize for Translation went to Oana Avasilichioaei for her work on Catherine Lalonde’s The Faeries Devouring (Book*hug).

The QWF also announced a new residency in Dublin for an English-language Quebec fiction writer. Applications are now open for the Max Margles Residency, to take place in August 2020.