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Francophone Writers in the Americas: A Rare Breed

While North America has produced a wealth of prize-winning English-language writers, the continent's Francophone writers have largely worked in obscurity.

Often mistakenly linked to Canada's Quebec province, this rich modern literary tradition -- alive in French-speaking enclaves from Louisiana to New Brunswick to Manitoba -- nevertheless has a spirit all its own.

These Francophone authors are the special focus of Festival America, a biennial literary event held outside Paris that celebrates writers from North America and is running through Sunday.

They use both standard French and local dialects to tell the story of their minority communities, which number about one million people in North America outside Quebec.

The writers rely on a handful of boutique publishers in Canada and Louisiana to bring these original voices to light. Every year, dozens of new titles are published.

"It's true that we're far away, with a small pool of local readers," says Canadian writer Roger Léveillé, who lives more than 2,000 kilometers (1,242 miles) from Montreal in Manitoba province.

For Léveillé, success for an author in a niche community is measured "by critical acclaim rather than book sales".

By that scale, the nearly 70-year-old writer -- who publishes as J.R. Léveillé -- is greatly accomplished.

He has written 30 books, essays and collections of poetry over the past 40 years, and continues to win literary awards, as he did in 2011 for the English translation of his best known work "Le Soleil du lac qui se couche" ("The Setting Lake Sun").

- Prizes in Paris -

France Daigle is also a star of the genre, for her captivating 2011 novel "Pour sûr" (For Sure), which showcases chiac, an Acadian dialect spoken in southeast New Brunswick that mixes old and modern French, with bits of English thrown in.

A thought-provoking read about minority cultures and their linguistic obsession, "Pour sûr" has earned Daigle five awards, including the prestigious Governor General of Canada Award.

"There's a lot going on here," exclaims Monika Boehringer, who teaches Acadian literature to English speakers at Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick.

"There's a new generation of writers that is active, that publishes and renews itself!"

Boehringer points to young Georgette LeBlanc from Pointe-à-l'Eglise in Nova Scotia, whose poems "Alma", "Amédé" and "Prudent" breathe new life into long forgotten figures in history.

Louisiana poet Kirby Jambon also recently earned a prize from the Académie Française, the pre-eminent French body on matter pertaining to the French language, for his collection "Petites communions."

"A Cajun poet, it's incredible!" enthuses Béatrice Germaine, a French consular official for cultural matters in New Orleans.

"French in Louisiana skipped a generation" after it was banned in public schools for more than 50 years up to 1968, explains Germaine, who has lived in the southern U.S. city for nearly two decades.

Today, the language has been reborn in Louisiana due to the opening of French immersion schools at the end of the 1980s, which fueled new works by a handful of writers, she says.

"Everyone is singing the praises of bilingualisme," says David Cheramie, a poet living in Lafayette, Louisiana, who had to relearn the language of his ancestors before producing two poetry collections "Lettre à mère" and "Julie Choufleur."

Cheramie is now working on a novel.

Source: Agence France Presse


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