Prise de parole ("Speaking Out") is a Canadian book publishing company.^[1] Located in Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada,^[2] the company publishes French language literature, primarily but not exclusively by Franco-Ontarian authors.^[3]

History

The company was established in the early 1970s by the Coopérative des artistes du Nouvel-Ontario, a group of professors and students at Laurentian University who established nearly all of the city's contemporary francophone cultural institutions.^[4] Its first book, released in 1973, was Lignes Signes, an anthology of poetry by Jean Lalonde, Placide Gaboury, Denis St-Jules and Gaston Tremblay,^[5] while its first fiction title was Hermaphrodismes, two erotic novellas written by Fernand Dorais under the pen name "Tristan Lafleur".^[6]

The most successful title in the company's history is Doric Germain's novel La vengeance de l'orignal.^[7] In 1996, the firm was involved in the Federal Court of Canada case Prise de parole Inc v Guérin, éditeur Ltée, after another publishing company published unauthorized excerpts from La vengeance de l'orignal in an anthology for use in schools.^[8] The case, which awarded Germain $10,000 in compensation but found that Guérin's actions were not an infringement on Germain's moral rights as the excerpts were not damaging to his reputation, is now considered a key precedent in the matter of moral rights in Canadian copyright law,

Other writers published by the company have included Herménégilde Chiasson,^[9] Jean-Marc Dalpé,^[10] Alain Doom, Fernand Ouellet, Daniel Poliquin, Patrice Desbiens,^[4] Michel Bock, Marguerite Andersen,^[4] Robert Marinier,^[11] Melchior Mbonimpa,^[12] Jocelyne Villeneuve,^[13] Maurice Henrie,^[4] Hélène Brodeur, Franco Catanzariti, Estelle Beauchamp and Robert Dickson,^[14] as well as French translations of English works by Charlie Angus, Phil Hall, Matthew Heiti and Tomson Highway.^[15]

The company's offices moved in 2022 to the new Place des Arts facility in downtown Sudbury.^[16]

Awards

As of 2018, titles published by the company have won the Governor General's Award for French-language drama twice, for Dalpé's Le Chien in 1989 and Il n'y a que l'amour in 1999, the Governor General's Award for French-language poetry twice, for Chiasson's Conversations in 1999 and Dickson's Humains paysages en temps de paix relative in 2002, and the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction once, for Dalpé's Un vent se lève qui éparpille in 2000.

References