The Quebec Writers Federation has announced the 24 books shortlisted for the 2021 QWF Literary Awards.

The awards honour English-language writers and translators in Quebec across six categories. The winner of each award will receive $3,000.

The prize for children’s and young adult literature has been renamed this year as the Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature.

The winners will be announced at a live-streamed gala in Montreal on Nov. 24.

Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature

• Dani Jansen, The Year Shakespeare Ruined My Life (Second Story Press)
• Nadine Neema, Journal of a Travelling Girl (Wandering Fox/Heritage House)
• Monique Polak, Room for One More (Kar-Ben Publishing)
• Su J. Sokol, Zee (Bouton d’or Acadie)

Concordia University First Book Prize (sponsored by Concordia University)

• Eli Tareq El Bechelany-Lynch, knot body (Metatron Press)
• Balfour M. Mount, Ten Thousand Crossroads: The Path As I Remember It (McGill-Queen’s University Press)
• Samir Shaheen-Hussain, Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism Against Indigenous Children in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press)
• Aimee Wall, We, Jane (Book*hug Press)

Cole Foundation Prize for Translation (French to English)

• Sheila Fischman, Em (Random House Canada)
  Translation of Em, Kim Thúy (Groupe Librex)
• Sarah Henzi, I Am a Damn Savage; What Have You Done to My Country? (Wilfrid Laurier University Press)
  Translation of Je suis une Maudite sauvagesse; Qu’as-tu fait de mon pays?, An Antane Kapesh (Mémoire d’Encrier)
• Donald Winkler, Orwell in Cuba: How 1984 Came to Be Published in Castro’s Twilight (Talonbooks)
  Translation of Avant l’Après, Frédérick Lavoie (La Peuplade Récit)

A.M. Klein Prize for Poetry (sponsored by two anonymous donors)

• Sarah Burgoyne, Because the Sun (Coach House Books)
• Klara du Plessis, Hell Light Flesh (Palimpsest Press)
• Jessie Jones, The Fool (Goose Lane Editions)
• Sarah Venart, I Am the Big Heart (Brick Books)

 Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction

• Tanya Bellehumeur-Allatt, Peacekeeper’s Daughter: A Middle-East Memoir (Thistledown Press)
• Karen Messing, Bent Out of Shape (Between the Lines)
• André Picard, Neglected No More: The Urgent Need to Improve the Lives of Canada’s Elders in the Wake of a Pandemic (Random House Canada)
• Robyn Sarah, Music, Late and Soon (Biblioasis)
• Samir Shaheen-Hussain, Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism Against Indigenous Children in Canada (McGill-Queen’s University Press)

Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for Fiction (sponsored by Librairie Paragraphe Bookstore)

• Mikhail Iossel, Love Like Water, Love Like Fire (Bellevue Literary Press)
• Saleema Nawaz, Songs for the End of the World (McClelland & Stewart)
• Aimee Wall, We, Jane (Book*hug Press)
• Kathleen Winter, Undersong (Knopf Canada)

The winners of three additional awards – the carte blanche Prize, Judy Mappin Community Award, and inaugural QWF College Writers Award – will also be announced at the Nov. 24 gala.