foto de William Ospina
Françoise Roy was born in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, Canada, in 1959. She has a Master’s degree in Geography with a Certificate in Latin American Studies (Bachelor of Science, University of Maryland, 1980 —Summa Cum Laude—; Master of Arts, University of Florida, 1983—Cum Laude—), as well as a Certificate in Translation from English to Spanish (O.M.T., 2000). She has worked as a free-lance interpreter and translator, and as an editor, apart from having been a French and English teacher. She has also given writing workshops. From 2000 to 2007, she wrote articles related to literature in the « Acento » section of La Voz de Michoacán newspaper. En 1997, she was awarded the National Literary Translation Award in Poetry (INBA, Mexico); in 2002, she won the second place in the Victoria de las Mercedes National Short Story Award (Mexico City); in 2005, she was a finalist of the Acento Short Story Contest, and in 2007, she was awarded the Jacqueline Déry-Mochon Award for her novel Si tu traversais le seuil (L’instant même, Quebec City, 2005). In 2006, she was given an honorific mention on the Seventh Short Story Literary Contest « Sobre rieles », in Monterrey, Mexico, and in 2007, on the « Acento » Short Story Context. In 2007, she won the Alonso Vidal National Poetry Award in Mexico. She has published one novel in Spanish and one in French, a book of short stories, one plaquette and eight poetry books, most in Spanish, two of them being bilingual (Spanish-French). She was granted in 2005 and in 2007 the Scholarship for Creative Work in Literature granted by the Jalisco Secretary of Culture, and in 2007, she was a resident artist at the Banff International Literary Translation Center at the Banff Centre for the Arts, in Alberta, Canada. She has translated close to fifty books, mostly in poetry. In 2002, she founded with other writers Tragaluz, a monthly art and culture magazine, in which she worked as an editor until it ceased to exist in 2007. She lives in Guadalajara, Mexico, since 1992.
Françoise Roy (Canada) is granted the 2008 Ditët e Naimit (“Days of Naim”) Award for the poetic rhythmics of her work, which goes along with the dynamics of contemporary daily life; for its neat and dramatic imagery; for its paradoxes and its logic of the absurd; and for the intensive experience of an intimate metaphysical world.
Dr. Agron Tuffa, president of the jury
