A Montreal launch for The Harmattan Winds

Sylvain Trudel is a French-Canadian writer of adult fiction as well as more than a dozen children’s titles. He earned degrees in science and cinema and worked as a clown, a mover, a cucumber picker, and a commercial analyst (among other jobs), before turning to writing. His debut novel, The Harmattan Winds, won both the Prix Molson (now the Prix Ringuet) and the Prix Canada-Suisse. His work has been honored with the Prix Saint-Exupéry, Prix des libraires du Québec, and Prix Christie, and in 2007, his novella Le Mer de la tranquilité won the Governor General’s Prize. He lives in Québec.

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Donald Winkler is a documentary filmmaker and literary translator. He graduated from the University of Manitoba in 1961 and attended the Yale School of Drama as a Woodrow Wilson Scholar. He has translated over forty works from French and has won the Governor General’s Award for translation three times. His translations include work by Quebecois writers Pierre Nepveu, Samuel Archibald, and Kevin Lambert and the writings of former Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien.

Mathieu Bélisle is a writer and professor of literature at Collège Jean-de-Brébeuf. His book L’empire invisible earned him the 2020 Pierre-Vadeboncœur Prize and was a finalist for the 2021 Governor General’s Literary Awards. He is also the author of Bienvenue au pays de la vie ordinaire (Leméac, 2017) and Ce qui meurt en nous (Leméac, 2022), for which he was a finalist for the 2023 LQ Essay Prize.