Heartlands / Pays du cœur: Geohumanities and Québec’s “regional” fiction

Led by Ceri Morgan, Professor of Place-writing and Geohumanities at Keele University, UK, the project analyses published fiction and creative nonfiction, reflecting on how literary texts help shape everyday understandings of, and interactions with, the region. It also generates new creative responses – including a digital map, audio-walk, dance, and creative writing – via artistic collaborations and participatory practices, such as artwalks and story-sharing with community members. 

The administrative region of l’Estrie established in 1981 is smaller than the historic region of the Eastern Townships, which dates from the late eighteenth century, with ‘township’ being a term used by the British government to refer to a particular unit of land. After being sidelined in favour of Montreal during the second half of the twentieth century, Québec’s regions have been embraced by creative writers since 2000. Unlike some of the other regions celebrated in twenty-first century Québec literature, however, the Eastern Townships and l’Estrie have been associated with creative writing in both the province’s majority languages (French and English) for over 60 years. A primarily English-language Townships poetry scene reached its peak in the 1960s, and included well-known writers, F.R. Scott, Louis Dudek, and Ralph Gustafson. Since the turn of the millennium, prose has become the main form associated with the region, especially literary fiction and genre fiction, notably murder-mysteries. Louise Penny’s Three Pines series likely represents the best-known contemporary English-language fiction set in the Townships. French-language creative prose is published in greater numbers than English-language fiction and creative nonfiction, echoing the changing demographics of the region. Whereas 150 years ago, over half the population was anglophone, anglophones currently represent around 4% of residents. Fiction and creative nonfiction in French is very diverse, ranging from literary fiction, memoir, murder-mysteries, counter-cultural writing, queer writing, young adult fiction, chick lit, speculative fiction, and more. French-language writers associated with the region in the twenty-first century include Louise Dupré, William S. Messier, Patrick Nicol, Michèle Plomer, and Anne Brigitte Renaud.

Reading, writing, and other art forms can take us elsewhere, in everyday life or the imagination. The talks and artworks featured here invite you to visit a range of real and imagined landscapes.

This research is supported by an Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellowship [grant number AH/T006250/1].
Ethics approval number: 0341