Doctor’s Book on Systemic Racism Takes Two Awards at QWF Literary Awards

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A rare double winner was among the stars of the 23rd annual Quebec Writers Federation Literary Awards gala, held Wednesday night at Lion d’Or and presented by Giller Prize-winning Montreal novelist Sean Michaels .

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First author Samir Shaheen-Hussain, a pediatrician and assistant professor of medicine at McGill, won the Concordia University First Book Award and the Mavis Gallant Award for nonfiction, for Fighting for a Hand to Hold: Confronting Medical Colonialism Against Ind Canada.

The three-person First Book jury praised the deeply researched work as “an important book that defines and addresses racism in all its nefarious forms … a wake-up call for governments and the medical community.” The Gallant jury called the book “especially necessary for Quebec politicians who continue to deny systemic racism against indigenous peoples and other racialized minorities.”

Mikhail Iossel won the Paragraphe Hugh MacLennan Prize for fiction for Love Like Water, Love Like Fire, a collection of stories inspired by the author’s experience growing up in the twilight years of the former Soviet Union and emigrating to North America, where he eventually took an academic position at Concordia. The longest of the stories, Moscow Windows, received special praise from the jury, calling it “brilliant … surreal and realistic, animated by humor and irony.”

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Also shortlisted in the category were Saleema Nawaz’s pandemic-themed novel Songs for the End of the World (written before COVID), We, Jane by Aimee Wall and Undersong by Kathleen Winter.

The AM Klein Prize for Poetry went to Sarah Venart for I Am the Big Heart, a collection praised as “a vulnerable and moving account of what it means to love and care for others.”

Monique Polak, a three-time QWF winner, won the Janet Savage Blachford Prize for Children’s and Young Adult Literature for her novel Room for One More. Polak was honored for her story, set in 1942, of a Montreal schoolgirl who learned about the experience of German Jews during World War II.

The Cole Foundation Translation Award alternates each year between titles from French to English and from English to French. This year it was the turn of the first, and the honor went to Sarah Henzi for I Am a Damn Savage; What Have You Done to My Country ?, the two-part translation of Je suis une Maudite sauvagesse and Qu’as-tu fait de mon pays by An Antane Kapesh? a pair of works first published in the 1970s in bilingual French-Innu editions . The jury said: “Henzi’s masterful translation and insightful epilogue have a powerful voice and illustrate a rare deep commitment to a text that deserves to be read everywhere.”

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The Judy Mappin Community Award, which recognizes outstanding contributions to English-language literature in Quebec, had two recipients this year: Paragraphe bookstore founder Richard King, and H. Nigel Thomas, novelist, teacher, and founder of Montreal of the literary magazine Kola, for his achievements in the recognition and promotion of black writers in Quebec.

Wednesday’s gala marked a return, after a year of COVID-required hiatus, to the venue that has been the home of the event for all but three years since 2002. Despite attendance restrictions, the resumption of the customary construction environment from the community was very well received by all.

You can watch a replay of the gala online. For more details visit qwf.org.

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