Monique Polak

Alors, chers lecteurs, préparez-vous pour un autre "blog entry" en français!

Moi et mon mari venons de rentrer à Montréal après un beau séjour dans la région de Kamouraska. J'étais invitée à l'Ecole secondaire Chanoine-Beaudet de St. Pascal, où j'ai fait des rencontres avec trois classes. Je crois que ç'est bien allé! Qu'en dites-vous, les élèves de Chanoine-Beaudet? (Et n'oubliez pas de corriger mes erreurs de français!)

Dans la photo, vous me voyez avec la bibliothéquaire Julie Néron qui a organisé ma visite (merci, Julie!!), Patrice, Josée Deschenes (enseignante d'anglais), et Claudie.

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Today, I am going to write my blog entry in French because I spent my morning working en français. Here I go! Wish me luck!

Ce matin, j'ai participé dans un combat de livres å la Bibliothèque de St. Léonard. Mon livre, Poupée, était parmi les cinq titres dans le combat. Je n'ai pas seulement recontré des très bons élèves de l'Ecole Antoine-de-Saint-Exupéry, j'ai aussi recontré l'auteur Michel J. Lévesque, et l'auteur et éditeur Robert Soulières. Nous avons tous les trois parlé un peu de nos livres (Robert a parlé d'un livre qu'il a publie entitré La Lettre F de Jean-François Soman) et les élèves avaient des excéllentes questions et commentaires.

Une élève, Méganne, a expliqué que le livre Arielle Queen de Michel l'a beacoup soulagé dans une periode difficile de sa vie. Moi, j'ai dit que pour moi aussi, les livres -- les lire et les écrire -- m'a sauvé dans le passé et me sauvent encore.

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That's me in today's pic with New York author Alyson Richman (Alyson is in the middle of the pic) and Montreal historian Trudis Goldsmith-Reber.

Goldsmith-Reber was the co-chairperson who helped organize Richman's talk tonight at the Jewish Public Library here in Montreal -- and I had the honour of introducing Richman to the audience. She is the author of The Lost Wife, a wonderful historical novel set partly in Theresienstadt, the concentration camp where my mum was imprisoned and which I also wrote about in my YA novel What World Is Left. So, as you can imagine, I was keen to meet Richman and hear what she had to say.

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In the first of today's pics, you'll get an idea of why I had fun during my visit today to Heritage Regional High School in St. Hubert.

I spotted this pair of socks -- they belong to a student named Melissa. Later, when I explained to students that it's better for writers to SHOW, rather than TELL, I used Melissa and her socks as an example. I told that them if I wanted to show, for example, that a student is free-spirited and unconventional, I could say she often wears unmatched socks.

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I'm going to begin today's blog entry with a little story. In 1983, probably many years before some of you readers of my blog were born, I was doing my Master's degree in English Literature at Concordia University. The student sitting next to me in a class on James Joyce was named Rina Singh. Have you ever just met someone and you know instantly he or she will be your friend for life? That's what happened with us.

Rina had recently married her husband and moved to Montreal from India. She was already an established poet in her home country and she was doing her Master's in Creative Writing at Concordia. When, a few months later, I found out I was pregnant, Rina was the first person I told! And over the years, Rina encouraged me in my writing -- when I was getting rejection letters from publishers, she assured me it was all just part of the process. And when she gave me a lucky little blue glass Ganesh statue... well, I sold my first manuscript not long after that!

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Today's pic was taken on Saturday afternoon at the prize ceremony for a Blue Metropolis contest called "Biting Stories." In the pic, author Alyxandra Harvey has just awarded the prize for top story to Nabil Shah, a Grade 11 student at John Rennie High School here in Montreal.

I had the great pleasure of interviewing Harvey on stage before she announced the contest results. She is the author of the hugely popular Drake Chronicles, a vampire series published by Bloomsbury.

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Why hello blog readers! It's Sunday morning and I'll be heading out soon to host a Writing Salon on the final day of this year's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. I'm going to talk a little about writing and then, well ... we're going to do something wonderful: WRITE!

Because I attended three super talks at Blue Met yesterday and did an on-stage interview, I've got loads of useful new writing tips to share with the people at this morning's event.

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Today was Day 2 at the Blue Metropolis Literary Festival here in Montreal. On my way to the launch of this year's edition of Quebec Roots: The Place Where I Live, I met up with YA author and festival participant Catherine Austen.

Catherine lives in Aylmer, Quebec -- so she was up at 5 this morning to make it to the festival. It's safe to say Catherine is currently the most feted YA author in Canada. Her novel, All Good Children, just won the Canadian Library Association 2012 YA Book Award and it's also up for the American YALSA prize.

In today's pic, you can see Catherine holding up a copy of her other new book, 26 Tips for Surviving Grade Six. Only she doctored the cover for her talk at the festival today -- she changed the words to "10 Tips for Surviving the Writing Life"!

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Today was the first day of this year's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival. I've asked all my students to try and attend at least one event -- there are loads to choose from. My Journalism class today happened to coincide with a talk by one of my favourite YA authors, Mahtab Narmsimhan, who is in from Toronto for  Blue Met ... and so several students from my class and I hopped on a metro and took a field trip over to the Richmond Square Branch of the Montreal Children's Library. 

In this first pic, you will see and some of my students en route to meet Mahtab. (I think they were a little embarrassed when I asked a strange man on the metro to take our pic!)

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Tomorrow is the start of this year's Blue Metropolis Literary Festival -- so I'll be trying to do as many blog entries as possible over the next few days.

Tomorrow afternoon, together with students in my Journalism class, we'll be going to listen to YA writer Mahtab Narsimhan discuss her latest book, The Tiffin. After that, Mahtab and I plan to hop in a cab and get to the opening gala event at the Opus Hotel.

Thursday, I'm planning to meet up with Gatineau author Catherine Austen whose amazing YA book All Good Children just won a coveted Canadian Library Association Prize. Don't worry, readers, I'll bring my camera and notebook and try to get you some pointers from both Mahtab and Catherine!

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