Blue Metropolis (also known as Blue Met) is an international
literary festival
A literary festival, also known as a book festival or writers' festival, is a regular gathering of writers and readers, typically on an annual basis in a particular city. A literary festival usually features a variety of presentations and readings ...
held annually in
Montreal
Montreal is the List of towns in Quebec, largest city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, province of Quebec, the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-largest in Canada, and the List of North American cit ...
. Founded in 1999 by Montreal writer
Linda Leith
Linda Jane Leith is a Montreal-based writer, translator, and publisher.
Biography
Leith was born in Belfast, Northern Ireland, when her family was living in the linen town of Lisburn. After elementary and secondary schooling in London and Basel, ...
, it is considered the world's first multilingual literary festival.
The festival is put on by Blue Metropolis Foundation, a
nonprofit organization
A nonprofit organization (NPO), also known as a nonbusiness entity, nonprofit institution, not-for-profit organization, or simply a nonprofit, is a non-governmental (private) legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public, or so ...
established in 1997 that offers educational and social programs.
Ann Charney
Ann Charney (born 1940) is a Canadian novelist, short story writer and journalist.
Career
Her most recent novel, ''Life Class'' was published in 2013. It is a story of displacement and ambition played out in the art circles of Venice, New York a ...
, and Mary Soderstrom) organized the literary event 'Write pour écrire' in partnership with the
Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois
L'Union des écrivaines et des écrivains québécois (UNEQ; English: ''Québec Union of Writers'') is a professional union of writers in Québec, Canada.
Founded on March 21, 1977 by some 50 writers following the leadership of Jacques Godbout, ...
(UNEQ).
In 1997, Leith established Blue Metropolis Foundation as a foundation 'created by writers and readers for writers and readers'.
The first Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival took place April 19 to 23, 1997. Its programming, which took place in French and English, included the first Blue Metropolis Translation Slam as well as literacy/community writing activities, readings, on-stage interviews, and panel discussions.
After the event, the foundation expanded by organizing educational programs for young people from primary school to
cégep
A CEGEP ( or ; , ; also written CÉGEP and cegep) is a publicly funded college providing general, professional, academic or a mix of programs; they are exclusive to the province of Quebec's education system. A loanword from French, it ori ...
levels.
The name 'Blue Metropolis' was partially inspired by the philosophical essay 'On Being Blue', in which the American writer
William H. Gass
William Howard Gass (July 30, 1924 – December 6, 2017) was an American novelist, short story writer, essayist, critic, and philosophy professor. He wrote three novels, three collections of short stories, a collection of novellas, and seven vol ...
investigates the many different and contradictory connotations of the word 'blue'.
In 2017, the festival added 'Violet Metropolis, an
LGBTQ
LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, Gay men, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (sexuality and gender), questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, Asexuality, asexual, ...
CBC Arts
CBC Arts () is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation that creates and curates written articles, short documentaries, non-fiction series and interactive projects that represent the excellence of Canada's diverse artistic communitie ...
, April 18, 2018. In 2018, the festival created the
Fugues
In classical music, a fugue (, from Latin ''fuga'', meaning "flight" or "escape""Fugue, ''n''." ''The Concise Oxford English Dictionary'', eleventh edition, revised, ed. Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson (Oxford and New York: Oxford Universit ...
'', April 19, 2018.
Awards
The festival presents a number of annual awards.
Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prize
*
Marie-Claire Blais
Marie-Claire Blais (5 October 1939 – 30 November 2021) was a Canadian writer, novelist, poet, and playwright from the province of Quebec. In a career spanning seventy years, she wrote novels, plays, collections of poetry and fiction, newspa ...
(2000)
*
Norman Mailer
Nachem Malech Mailer (January 31, 1923 – November 10, 2007), known by his pen name Norman Kingsley Mailer, was an American writer, journalist and filmmaker. In a career spanning more than six decades, Mailer had 11 best-selling books, at least ...
(2001)
*
Mavis Gallant
Mavis Leslie de Trafford Gallant, ( Young; 11 August 1922 – 18 February 2014), was a Canadian writer who spent much of her life and career in France. Best known as a short story writer, she also published novels, plays and essays.
Person ...
(2002)
*
Maryse Condé
Maryse Condé (née Marise Liliane Appoline Boucolon; 11 February 1934 – 2 April 2024) was a French novelist, critic, and playwright from the French Overseas department and region of Guadeloupe. She was also an academic, whose teaching car ...
(2003)
*
Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster (February 3, 1947 – April 30, 2024) was an American writer, novelist, memoirist, poet, and filmmaker. His notable works include '' The New York Trilogy'' (1987), '' Moon Palace'' (1989), '' The Music of Chance'' (1990), ' ...
(2004)
*
Carlos Fuentes
Carlos Fuentes Macías (; ; November 11, 1928 – May 15, 2012) was a Mexican novelist and essayist. Among his works are ''The Death of Artemio Cruz'' (1962), '' Aura'' (1962), '' Terra Nostra'' (1975), '' The Old Gringo'' (1985) and '' Christop ...
(2005)
*
Michel Tremblay
Michel Tremblay (born 25 June 1942) is a Canadian writer, novelist and playwright.
Tremblay was born in Montreal, Quebec, where he grew up in the French-speaking neighbourhood of Plateau Mont-Royal; at the time of his birth, a neighbourhood ...
(2006)
*
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian novelist, poet, literary critic, and an inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of nonfiction, nine collections of short fiction, eight chi ...
(2007)
*
Daniel Pennac
Daniel Pennac (real name Daniel Pennacchioni, born 1 December 1944 in Casablanca, French protectorate in Morocco, French Morocco) is a French writer. He received the Prix Renaudot in 2007 for his essay ''Chagrin d'école''.
Daniel Pennacchioni i ...
(2008)
*
A. S. Byatt
Dame Antonia Susan Duffy (; 24 August 1936 – 16 November 2023), known professionally by her former married name, A.S. Byatt ( ), was an English critic, novelist, poet and short-story writer. Her books have been translated into more than thirt ...
(2009)
*
Dany Laferrière
Dany Laferrière (; born Windsor Klébert Laferrière, 13 April 1953) is a writer and filmmaker. He was elected to seat 2 of the Académie française on 12 December 2013, and inducted in May 2015. Born in Haiti, he lives between Montreal and P ...
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates (born June 16, 1938) is an American writer. Oates published her first book in 1963, and has since published 58 novels, a number of plays and novellas, and many volumes of short stories, poetry, and nonfiction. Her novels ''Black ...
(2012)
*
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín ( , ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
His first novel, ''The South (novel), The South'', was published in 1990. ''The Blackwater Lightship'' was short ...
(2013)
*
Richard Ford
Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is an American novelist and short story author, and writer of a series of novels featuring the character Frank Bascombe.
Ford's first collection of short stories, ''Rock Springs (short stories), Rock Springs ...
(2014)
*
Nancy Huston
Nancy Louise Huston, Order of Canada, OC (born September 16, 1953) is a Canadian novelist and essayist, a longtime resident of France, who writes primarily in French and translates her own works into English.
Biography
Huston was born in Calgary ...
(2015)
*
Anne Carson
Anne Patricia Carson (born June 21, 1950) is a Canadian poet, essayist, translator, classicist, and professor.
Trained at the University of Toronto, Carson has taught classics, comparative literature, and creative writing at universities across ...
(2016)
*
Anita Desai
Anita Desai (born Anita Mazumdar, 24 June 1937) is an Indian novelist and Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three times. She received t ...
Annie Proulx
Edna Ann Proulx ( ; born August 22, 1935) is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx.
She won the PEN/Faulkner Award f ...
(2019)
Premio Metropolis Azul
In 2013, the festival announced a new prize, the Premio Metropolis Azul. The prize is awarded to works which explore some aspect of
Hispanophone
Hispanophone refers to anything related to the Spanish language.
In a cultural, rather than merely linguistic sense, the notion of "Hispanophone" goes further than the above definition. The Hispanic culture is the legacy of the vast and prolonge ...
culture or history and given annually to an author from any country or region for a work of fiction written in Spanish, English, or French. The prize is sponsored by
Ginny Stikeman
Virginia "Ginny" Stikeman is a Canadian filmmaker, director, producer and editor known for her documentary work. Stikeman had a 30-year career at the National Film Board of Canada, and led its women's unit, Studio D, from 1990 until its closure in ...
.
*
Sergio Ramírez
Sergio Ramírez Mercado (; born 5 August 1942 in Masatepe, Nicaragua) is a Nicaraguan writer and intellectual who was a key figure in 1979 revolution, served in the leftist Government Junta of National Reconstruction and as vice president of ...
, ''La fugitiva'' (2013)
*
Luis Alberto Urrea
Luis Alberto Urrea (born August 20, 1955 in Tijuana, Mexico) is a Mexican-American poet, novelist, and essayist.
Life
Luis Urrea is the son of Alberto Urrea Murray, of Rosario, Sinaloa, Mexico and Phyllis Dashiell, born in Staten Island, New Y ...
, ''Queen of America'' (2014)
*
Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz ( ; born December 31, 1968) is a Dominican American writer, creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a former fiction editor at '' Boston Review''. Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience ...
(2015)
*
Valeria Luiselli
Valeria Luiselli (born August 16, 1983) is a Mexican-American author. She is the author of the book of essays ''Sidewalks'' and the novel '' Faces in the Crowd'', which won the ''Los Angeles Times'' Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction. Luisel ...
(2016)
*
Francisco Goldman
Francisco Goldman (born 1954) is an American novelist, journalist, and Allen K. Smith Professor of Literature and Creative Writing, Trinity College. His most recent novel, ''Monkey Boy'' (2021), was a finalist for the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for Fi ...
(2017)
*
Leila Guerriero
Leila Guerriero (born 17 February 1967) is an Argentine journalist and writer.
Career
Leila Guerriero was born to a Syrian father and a German mother. She graduated from the Colegio Nacional Normal Superior de Junín. She studied tourism, a field ...
(2018)
Blue Metropolis First Peoples Prize
The Blue Metropolis First Peoples Prize is awarded to a North American Indigenous writer for a work in any genre.
* Annharte (2015)
* Thomas King (2016)
*
David Treuer
David Treuer (born 1970) is an American writer, critic, and academic. As of 2019, he had published seven books, and his 2019 book, '' The Heartbeat of Wounded Knee: Native America from 1890 to the Present,'' was a National Book Award Finalist. H ...
(2017)
*
Lee Maracle
Bobbi Lee Maracle (born Marguerite Aline Carter; July 2, 1950November 11, 2021) was an Indigenous Canadian writer and academic of the Stó꞉lō nation. Born in North Vancouver, British Columbia, she left formal education after grade 8 to tra ...
(2018)
Blue Metropolis Words to Change Prize
The Blue Metropolis Words to Change Prize is awarded to a writer whose work connects linguistic, religious, ethnic or other communities.
*
Gene Luen Yang
Gene Luen Yang (; born August 9, 1973) is an American cartoonist. He is a frequent lecturer on the subjects of graphic novels and comics, at comic book conventions and universities, schools, and libraries. In addition, he was the Director of ...
Imbolo Mbue
Imbolo Mbue (born 1981) is a Cameroonian American novelist and short story writer based in New York City. She is known for her debut novel '' Behold the Dreamers'' (2016), which garnered her the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Blue Me ...
In 2016 the festival announced a new prize in association with the Conseil des arts de Montréal. The work is awarded to a first or second generation migrant to Quebec, residing in Montreal, from a multi-cultural community, written in French or English, for a first publication in Quebec.
* Ghayas Hachem, ''Play Boys'' (2016)
*
Xue Yiwei
Xue Yiwei (, born in 1964) is a Chinese-born Canadian author.
His hometown is Changsha, Hunan, and his birthplace was Chenzhou in the same province. He attended the Beijing University of Aeronautics (now Beihang University) in a computer science ...
, ''Shenzheners'' (2017)
* Alina A Dumitrescu, ''Le cimetière des abeilles'' (2018)
Blue Metropolis Violet Prize
The
Blue Metropolis Violet Prize
The Blue Metropolis Violet Prize is a Canadian literary award, presented to an established LGBTQ writer to honour their body of work.LGBTQ
LGBTQ people are individuals who are lesbian, Gay men, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, or questioning (sexuality and gender), questioning. Many variants of the initialism are used; LGBTQIA+ people incorporates intersex, Asexuality, asexual, ...
writer for their body of work.
*
Nicole Brossard
Nicole Brossard (born November 27, 1943) is a French-Canadian formalist poet and novelist. Her work is known for exploration of feminist themes and for challenging masculine-oriented language and points of view in French literature.
She lives i ...
(2018)
*
Dionne Brand
Dionne Brand (born 7 January 1953) is a Canadian poet, novelist, essayist and documentarian. She was Toronto's third Poet Laureate from September 2009 to November 2012 and first Black Poet Laureate. She was admitted to the Order of Canada in ...
(2019)
Blue Metropolis Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Literary Prize
The festival previously awarded the Blue Metropolis Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Literary Prize. Named after the 17th-century poet al-Majidi ibn Dhaher, the prize was initiated in 2007 and is worth CAD $5,000. The prize was sponsored by the
Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage
The Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage (known colloquially as the ADACH) was a statutory body in the United Arab Emirates that administered cultural heritage in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi.Issa J Boullata
Issa J. Boullata (; February 25, 1929 – May 1, 2019) was a Palestinian scholar, writer, and translator of Arabic literature.
Biography
He was born in Jerusalem on February 25, 1929 during the British Mandate of Palestine. He obtained ...
served as consultant for the prize and the jury was composed of an international roster of poets, novelists, and literary professionals. The prize is currently on hiatus.
*
Elias Khoury
Elias Khoury (; 12 July 1948 – 15 September 2024) was a Lebanese novelist and advocate of the Palestinian cause. His novels and literary criticism have been translated into several languages. In 2000, he won the Prize of Palestine for his bo ...
(2007)
*
Saadi Youssef
Saadi Youssef () (1934 – 13 June 2021) was an Iraqi author, poet, journalist, publisher, and political activist. He published thirty volumes of poetry in addition to seven books of prose.
Life
Saadi Youssef studied Arabic literature in Baghda ...
(2008)
*
Zakaria Tamer
Zakaria Tamer (; born January 2, 1931), also spelled Zakariya Tamir, is a Syrian short story writer. He is one of the most widely read and translated short story writers of modern Syrian literature, as well as one of the foremost authors of chi ...
(2009)
*
Joumana Haddad
Joumana Haddad (; Salloum; born December 6, 1970, in Beirut) is a Lebanon, Lebanese author, public speaker, journalist and human rights activist. She has been selected as one of the world’s 100 most powerful Arab women by Arabian Business, Arab ...
(2010)
*
Alaa Al Aswany
Alaa Al Aswany (, ; born 26 May 1957) is an Egyptians, Egyptian writer, novelist, dentist and a founding member of the political movement Kefaya. He is based in Paris and New York where lives and teaches creative writing.
Early life and career ...
(2011)
*
Ahdaf Soueif
Ahdaf Soueif (; born 23 March 1950) is an Egyptian novelist and political and cultural commentator.
Early life
Soueif was born in Cairo, where she lives, and was educated in Egypt and England. She studied for a PhD in linguistics at the Universit ...
(2012)
*
Hisham Matar
Hisham Matar (; born 1970) is an American-born British-Libyan novelist, essayist, and memoirist. His debut novel '' In the Country of Men'' was shortlisted for the 2006 Man Booker Prize, and his memoir of the search for his father, '' The Retur ...