Do you love giving book recommendations? Got a favourite local author you’d like to highlight?
Enter the Quebec Books Curator Contest! Each month from July to the end of 2025, we’ll showcase a new collection of Quebec books curated by a QWF member, highlighting the vibrancy and diversity of the province’s English-language literary scene.
To participate, send us your book collection idea by Wednesday, April 30 by filling out this Google Form. From the submissions, we’ll select eight collections, each of which will be featured one month from May to December on our Quebec Books Database of English-Language Authors.
To kick things off, we’ve asked Professor Emeritus and longtime QWF member Daniel Levitin to curate the inaugural collection: 10 Books About Musical Creativity. Here’s what he had to say:
“This collection features stories of creativity, identity, and resilience through the lens of music. From Cohen’s poetic reflections to Wainwright’s raw memoir and Siblin’s pursuit of Bach’s Cello Suites, each book explores the link between personal history and creative expression. Sarah’s meditation on music’s lifelong pull and the experimental edge of Mad Skills and Us Conductors reveal artistry as more than talent—it’s shaped by memory, place, and passion. For young readers, Oscar Lives Next Door offers an accessible entry into music history, cultural identity, and the magic of sound. Through the classical world, folk traditions, and personal narratives, these selections highlight that creativity isn’t just something we do—it’s how we understand who we are.”
—Daniel J. Levitin, Professor Emeritus, McGill University
Instructions
To submit to the contest:
- Choose 6-10 books from the Quebec Books Database (quebecbooks.qwf.org).
- Prepare a short bio and blurb for your collection (max 120 words each). The blurb should explain the rationale behind your choices of books and what they have in common, be it a theme, subject, or something else. Be sure to include a title for your collection (for example, “Books from the Townships,” “Montreal Crime Reads,” “Utopian and Dystopian Fiction”).
- Send us your proposed collection by filling out this Google Form. You will receive a response from QWF two weeks after the deadline.
For inspiration, browse our existing collections.
Rules and Guidelines:
- The books you select should have something in common. It could something as simple as your favourite books by Quebec authors, but we’re more likely to publish a collection with a cohesive theme, whether it’s books that inspired the last book you wrote, books by authors from one city or region of Quebec, or books about a specific subject or time period. Your creativity is encouraged!
- You must choose books that are already in the database. Use the search features to search for particular authors or book titles. (Tip: Use quotation marks around search terms to search for an exact phrase and narrow your search results—”like this,” for example.)
- You must be a QWF member to participate.
- You cannot include your own books in your collection, but you can mention them in your blurb or bio.
- Your choices can be books you’ve read or that you want to read. You do not have to have read all of them in their entirety.
- Your pitch should be succinct and enticing. We will use your pitch as a description for your collection, so it should do a good job selling these books.
About the Quebec Books Database
The Quebec Books Database of English-Language Authors is an ever-expanding online directory of books submitted to the QWF Awards. Conceived by QWF as part of the year-long celebration of Montreal as UNESCO’s “World Book Capital,” the project was initially supported by the Montreal World Book Capital Committee and the Department of Canadian Heritage. In November 2023, the database was revamped and relaunched, thanks to a supplemental grant from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec. Today, it contains over 2000 books by over 1100 Quebec writers.