The Salon du livre unveiled Wednesday the 10 finalists for the Janette-Bertrand Literary Prize, which recognizes French-language works that promote inclusion and advance feminist causes. Among the nominees is Stéphanie Michaud, with her short-story collection Bon marché (Hashtag). In her debut book, Michaud chronicles the everyday lives of a range of women who cross paths in a fictional grocery store. Many of the selected works echo the #MeToo movement and address public allegations of sexual misconduct. That is the case with Implosion by Laurence Florisca Rivard (Héliotrope), which follows the loved ones of a tennis player accused of sexual assault, as well as the graphic novel Crue by Jean-Paul Eid and Claude Paiement (La Pastèque), which centres on a Quebec filmmaker whose name appears both on the list of Oscar finalists and on a list of sexual abusers publicly accused of misconduct. Other books, including Fille-mère by Ingrid Falaise (Libre Expression), Les orphelines by Sophie Bienvenu (Le Cheval d’août), Longtemps, se taire by Sylvie Laniel (Presses de l’Université de Montréal) and Nous serons un village au cœur de la ville by Florence Sara G. Ferraris (Atelier 10), were selected for highlighting themes of women’s empowerment and autonomy. The crime novel Je n’ai personne à qui dire que j’ai peur by Véronique Marcotte (Québec Amérique), the autobiographical account Tout cela m’appartient by Virginie Chaloux-Gendron (Éditions du Boréal) and the novel Cindy_16 by Louis-Daniel Godin (La Peuplade) round out the preliminary list. The five finalists will be announced in October, and the winner will be honoured Nov. 25 at the Palais des congrès, alongside Janette Bertrand and jury chair Pauline Marois, the former premier of Quebec. The winner will succeed author Élizabeth Lemay, who received the Janette-Bertrand Literary Prize in 2025 for her autofictional novel L’été de la colère, published by Éditions du Boréal. Two new members are joining the jury this year: Marie-Claude Leduc, a social worker and health network manager, and Jessica Lubino, an intercultural mediator and equity, diversity and inclusion professional. They join Jeanne Boivin, a student in French-language literature at the Université de Montréal, and Philippe Fortin, a college literature teacher. This report by The Canadian Press was first published in French on Sept. 16, 2026.
