From the calm of a village after a snowstorm to the suffocating quiet of a secret, silence can be stressful or soothing. At the seaside, we readily appreciate it, but in a house on the edge of a dark forest, we dread it. In these five suggested books, silence exerts pressure on the protagonists by...

What if creativity were the natural path to empathy? In the subjects to which they pay attention, through a sideways glance or by taking a step back, through original glasses or a new filter, artists become a transmission belt toward unknown or singular realities. This fully made-in-Quebec selection dwells on literary proposals that love to...

Although reading is one of the strongest sources of relaxation and learning for me, podcasts are important tools that help make my daily life rich and inspiring. They accom- pany my travels, my moments of rest, and sometimes even my training in nature. Diving into the private life of inspiring people often helps me refresh...

NECESSARY – Naomi Fontaine, Marie-Andrée Gill, and Michel Jean are now well-established in fiction or poetry. Since the month of June is devoted to Indigenous literature, the opportunity was too good not to drink it up, regardless of the label. Because this isn’t a genre, strictly speaking, and even less so a uniform production, but...

SET SAIL — A resource too long believed to be inexhaustible or renewable, at once the source of life and blue gold that we snatch up even as it slips through our fingers, water has always fascinated artists. An indomitable muse, a (super)natural power, and an instrument of the sea breeze, it seeps in, imposes...

De Kamouraska à Arvida, la littérature d’ici a toujours su arpenter le territoire pour raconter le Québec autrement. Regard sur cinq propositions récentes qui, loin de s’en remettre qu’aux seuls paysages, s’attardent d’abord à l’humain qui habite l’horizon.

What remains of the grey of our slump, our rose-coloured glasses and our dark clouds, after more than a year of hanging on and then falling off the rainbow? Has the concept of horizon become prehistoric, in the prism of our small-time areas? In addition to the blue of an all-Québec literary selection, the focus...

The fields of fir trees and the lakes camouflaged by the reliefs of the ground; the unstable network and the timid flickering of the Wi-Fi bar; unoccupied chalets and abandoned businesses… they have all been a real eye-opener for my relationship to the arts. Inspired by Thoreau and the countless voices of the call of...

FROM ONE PAGE TO THE NEXT — There are essential services, and essential workers too—those who were baptized at the height of the crisis as guardian angels. But to whom does this essence belong if not to the whole community? How do we reconnect with it if not by slowing down? Here are a few...