QWF is delighted to announce that the recipient of the 2025 Judy Mappin Community Award is Jan Draper.
For many decades, Jan has a tireless champion of English-language literature in the Eastern Townships and has created opportunities for writers of all ages to develop their craft and share their voices.
At 20, Jan began teaching poetry classes at Bishop’s University before moving to Champlain Regional College in Sherbrooke. She has since extended her reach far beyond the classroom. For years, she organized and led workshops in libraries, schools, and senior residences across the province, where she brought literary engagement to audiences who might otherwise have had no access to such opportunities. Today, she sustains a vibrant adult writing community that spans the Eastern Townships and connects participants from across Quebec and beyond.
Central to Jan’s impact is the Write Here, Write Now (WHWN) initiative, which she and Melanie Cutting helped to begin with the support of the Townshippers’ Association and a Canadian Heritage grant. Through her vision and coalition-building, what began as a small series of in-person workshops has grown into a multi-mode program of literary advancement that has had lasting value to the community. Now supported by the Grace Village retirement community and a grant from New Horizons, WHWN aims to increase the awareness of English-language literature in Quebec by offering more than 30 free sessions each year in genres ranging from memoir, exposition, playwriting, and poetry to novel writing, fantasy, local history, and publishing.
For her unwavering dedication, her ability to envision and expand inclusive literary spaces, and her commitment to nurturing new voices, we take great pleasure in presenting the 2025 Judy Mappin Community Award to Jan Draper.
The Judy Mappin Community Award is named for the first recipient of QWF’s Community Award in 1995, who quietly but fiercely promoted generations of Canadian writers in her long career as a bookseller at the now-defunct Double Hook bookstore in Westmount, Quebec. It is bestowed every year to a member of the literary community for their significant and longstanding contributions to English-language literature in Quebec. For the first time in its history, the award will include a cash prize of $1,000 and a unique trophy—the “Judy”—created by Glen LeMesurier.
The 2025 QWF Awards Gala
Jan Draper will be honoured as the winner of the Judy Mappin Community Award the evening of Monday, November 10, at the 2025 QWF Awards Gala, hosted by Shelley Pomerance.
The gala will also unveil the winners of the 2025 QWF Literary Awards in fiction, non-fiction, first book, translation, poetry, spoken word, and children’s and young adult literature. The winners of the 2025 carte blanche Prize and the 2025 QWF College Writers Award will also be revealed.
The theme of this year’s gala is “Literary Greats.” Attendees are invited to get in the spirit of the theme by dressing as their favourite author or literary character. Don your Holmes-inspired deerstalker or a black trilby à la Leonard Cohen. Come dressed as Maya Angelou, Margaret Atwood, or Oscar Wilde. Come as you are, or as Wonderland’s Queen of Hearts. We want to see who inspires you.
Tickets to the reception are $60 ($40 for full-time students) and include two glasses of wine, beer, or non-alcoholic drink and admission to the awards ceremony. Tickets for the ceremony alone are $25 ($10 for full-time students).