Blue Metropolis (also known as Blue Met) is an international literary festival held annually in
Montreal
Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the second-most populous city in Canada and most populous city in the Canadian province of Quebec. Founded in 1642 as '' Ville-Marie'', or "City of Mary", it is named after Mount Royal, the triple ...
since 1999. Founded by Montreal writer Linda Leith, it is one of the world's first multilingual literary festival. In early 2011, Leith departed, and a new president and a new director of programming were hired.
The festival is put on by Blue Metropolis Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation established in 1997. The foundation offers educational and social programs year-round, in classrooms and online.
History
Blue Metropolis was inspired by an earlier event. In 1996, three Montreal writers who were members of the Writer's Union of Canada (Linda Leith, Ann Charney, and Mary Soderstrom) organized a new literary event 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). Called 'Write pour écrire'.
In 1997, Leith went on to establish Blue Metropolis Foundation as uniquely 'created by writers and readers for writers and readers'.
The first Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival took place April 19 to 23, 1999. Its programming, which took place in French or English or both, included the first Blue Metropolis Translation Slam and literacy/community writing activities, as well as readings, on-stage interviews, and panel discussions.
After the event, the foundation was able to expand its scope beyond the festival and organize educational programmes for young people, from the primary school to
cégep
A CEGEP ( or ; ), also written cégep, CÉGEP and cegep, is a publicly funded college providing technical, academic, vocational or a mix of programs; they are exclusive to the province of Quebec's education system. A loanword from French, ...
levels.
The name 'Blue Metropolis' was partially inspired by the philosophical essay 'On Being Blue', in which the American writer William H. Gass investigates the many different and contradictory connotations of the word 'blue'.
In 2017, the festival added an
LGBTQ
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is ...
CBC Arts
CBC Arts (french: Radio-Canada 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 div ...
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 Québec. In a career spanning seventy years, she wrote novels, plays, collections of poetry and fiction, newsp ...
Mavis Gallant
Mavis Leslie de Trafford Gallant, , née 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.
Pe ...
(2002)
*
Maryse Condé
Maryse Condé (née Boucolon; February 11, 1937) is a French novelist, critic, and playwright from the French Overseas department and region of Guadeloupe. Condé is best known for her novel ''Ségou'' (1984–85).Condé, Maryse, and Richard ...
(2003)
*
Paul Auster
Paul Benjamin Auster (born February 3, 1947) is an American writer and film director. His notable works include '' The New York Trilogy'' (1987), '' Moon Palace'' (1989), '' The Music of Chance'' (1990), '' The Book of Illusions'' (2002), ''The ...
(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 ''Christopher ...
(2005)
*
Michel Tremblay
Michel Tremblay (born 25 June 1942) is a French-Canadian 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 wit ...
Dany Laferrière
Dany Laferrière (born Windsor Kléber Laferrière, 13 April 1953) is a Haitian-Canadian novelist and journalist who writes in French. He was elected to seat 2 of the Académie française on 12 December 2013, and inducted in May 2015.
Life
Bo ...
Colm Tóibín
Colm Tóibín (, approximately ; born 30 May 1955) is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, journalist, critic, playwright and poet.
His first novel, '' The South'', was published in 1990. '' The Blackwater Lightship'' was shortlis ...
(2013)
*
Richard Ford
Richard Ford (born February 16, 1944) is an American novelist and short story writer. His best-known works are the novel ''The Sportswriter'' and its sequels, ''Independence Day'', ''The Lay of the Land'' and ''Let Me Be Frank With You'', and the ...
Anne Carson
Anne 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 the Unit ...
(2016)
*
Anita Desai
Anita Desai, born Anita Mazumdar (born 24 June 1937) is an Indian novelist and the Emerita John E. Burchard Professor of Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As a writer she has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize three ti ...
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 fo ...
(2019)
Premio Metropolis Azul
In 2013, the festival announced a new prize, the Premio Metropolis Azul. Given each year to an author from any country or region for a work of fiction written in Spanish, English, or French, the prize is awarded to works which explore some aspect of Hispanophone culture or history. The prize is sponsored by Ginny Stikeman.
*
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, ''Queen of America'' (2014)
*
Junot Díaz
Junot Díaz (; born December 31, 1968) is a Dominican-American writer, creative writing professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and was fiction editor at '' Boston Review''. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freed ...
(2015)
*
Valeria Luiselli
Valeria Luiselli (born August 16, 1983) is a Mexican author living in the United States. 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 F ...
(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 ...
The Blue Metropolis First Peoples Prize is awarded to a North American Indigenous writer for a work in any genre. Winners have included:
* Annharte (2015)
* Thomas King (2016)
* David Treuer (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 tr ...
(2018)
Blue Metropolis Words to Change Prize
The Blue Metropolis Words to Change Prize is awarded to a writer whose work connects communities, whether they be linguistic, religious, ethnic or other communities:
* Gene Luen Yang (2015)
*
Abdourahman Waberi
Abdourahman A. Waberi ( so, Cabdiraxmaan Waaberi) is a novelist, essayist, poet, academic and short-story writer from Djibouti.
Early life
Abdourahman Waberi was born in Djibouti City in the French Somali Coast, the current Republic of Djibouti. ...
(2016)
*
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 has garnered her the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction and the Blue M ...
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, ''Shenzheners'' (2017)
* Alina A Dumitrescu, ''Le cimetière des abeilles'' (2018)
LGBTQ
' is an initialism that stands for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender. In use since the 1990s, the initialism, as well as some of its common variants, functions as an umbrella term for sexuality and gender identity.
The LGBT term is ...
writer for their body of work.
*
Nicole Brossard
Nicole Brossard (born November 27, 1943) is a leading 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.
Sh ...
Blue Metropolis Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Arab Literary Prize
The festival in the past also 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 is sponsored by the
Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture and Heritage
The Abu Dhabi Authority for Culture & 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 is composed of an international roster of poets, novelists, and literary professionals. The prize is currently on hiatus.
Past winners of the Al Majidi Ibn Dhaher Prize are:
*
Elias Khoury
Elias Khoury ( ar, إلياس خوري; born 12 July 1948) is a Lebanon, Lebanese novelist, and prominent public intellectual. Accordingly, he has published myriad novels related to literary criticism, which have been translated into several fore ...
Zakaria Tamer
Zakaria Tamer ( ar, زكريا تامر, Zakariyyā Tāmir; born January 2, 1931), also spelled Zakariya Tamir, is a Syrian short story writer.
He is one of the most important and widely read and translated short story writers in the Arab world ...
Alaa Al Aswany
Alaa Al Aswany ( ar, علاء الأسواني, ; born 26 May 1957) is an Egyptian writer, novelist, and a founding member of the political movement Kefaya.
Early life and career
Al Aswany was born on 26 May 1957 in Cairo. His mother, Zaina ...
Hisham Matar
Hisham Matar ( ar, هشام مطر) (born 1970) is an American born British-Libyan writer. His memoir of the search for his father, '' The Return'', won the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography and the 2017 PEN America Jean Stein Bo ...