At a previous version of Québec Édition’s Rendez-vous Éditeurs de Livres, a publishing fellowship set in Montréal. Image: ANEL
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
Application Deadline: June 1
Very familiar to Publishing Perspectives readers, Québec Édition is the export organization of the Association nationale des éditeurs de livres (ANEL), the Montreal-based National Association of Book Publishers.
And since 2013, Québec Édition has organized its Rendez-vous, a fellowship program in Montréal, offering chances for international publishers to meet their colleagues and counterparts in the Québecois and French-Canadian publishing industry and community.
The program, set this year for November 22 to 27, has just opened its application process this week, with a deadline of June 1. Having moved to a digital format for the past two years of the still-ongoing coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic, the fellowship is expected to return to an in-person event this year.
Those dates in November will coincide with the planned run of the Salon du livre de Montréal (November 23 to 27), and the program and its partners cover transportation and accommodation costs. Meetings with publishers are set at the book fair, and networking among professionals is a key interest.
Applications are welcomed from publishers of all nationalities and publishing sectors, both in the trade and academic publishing. Application materials can be found here (PDF). Candidates need to be proficient in either English or French, as meetings with French-language publishers will be conducted in one or the other language. (Most of these publishers are fluent in English as well as French.)
In its descriptive material from the program’s organizers, we read, “The objective is to encourage the discovery of our publishing industry and to develop professional dialogue. The program supports publishers in their export activities, strengthens transnational exchanges and focuses on the creation of a vast network of contacts all around the world.
A selection committee looks for chances to form a diverse group of fellows each year in terms of backgrounds, age, experience, and the sizes of the publishing houses at which participants are based.
“By stimulating the international influence of Quebec and French-Canadian literature, Rendez-vous emphasizes the creativity, the expertise and the talent of our book professionals.”
The City of Montreal as well as the Québec and Canadian governments provide support and partnership to make the program possible.
More information and background on the program is here.
Here’s a short video from Alain Chevarier about the fellowship program from 2018.
More from Publishing Perspectives on Québec is here, more on Québec Édition is here, more on the Canadian market is here, more from us on publishing and the French language is here, and more on fellowship programs in international publishing is here.
More on the coronavirus COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on international book publishing is here.