Audrey Harvey, a student in the Department of French Studies at Glendon, has won this year’s Micheline Saint-Cyr Prize for her short story, Le Tour du Chapeau.
Hailing from Quebec, Harvey has lived in Toronto for eight years. She studies translation and loves literature, language and above all poetry. She writes short stories and poems with the hope that they will be read, that they will allow people to escape loneliness, routine and boredom. Toronto has inspired her to write her winning short story, which she researched so that although the characters are imagined, the historical context is real.
“I think this short story is very Canadian with a universal feeling attached to it,” says Harvey.
Her story will be published in Virages, a prestigious Franco-Ontarian short-story journal. The evaluation of the entries was done 
anonymously by a jury that included four external members (all Franco-Ontarian writers) – Marguerite Andersen, Didier Leclair, Antonio D’Alfonso and Michel Thérien – and Professor Lélia Young, an internal member, who chaired the adjudicating committee.
From left, Didier Leclair, Audrey Harvey, Lélia Young and Antonio D’Alfonso
The event included literary readings by Leclair and D’Alfonso, invited by The Writers Society of Toronto (La Société des écrivain-e-s de Toronto, La SET) and several other writers, including Hédi Bouraoui, Cécile Cloutier and Janet Ritch. The event, which was organized by Young, celebrated Francophone Week and was sponsored by the Canada Council for the Arts.
The Micheline Saint-Cyr Prize is an annual French-language short story contest that celebrates writing produced by York students. Each year, the best short story is awarded a prize of $150 and the writer is celebrated during a special event hosted by the Department of French Studies in the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies. The contest was open to all undergraduate, master’s and doctoral students enrolled in French studies.
More about the Micheline Saint-Cyr Prize
The prize was created by Lélia Young in 2002 during her role as president of the Société des écrivain-e-s de Toronto (la SET). She established the award to honour the memory of the French-Canadian poet and artist Micheline Saint-Cyr, who died in 2002. Saint-Cyr founded La Chasse-Galerie in Toronto (1968-1980), organized Toronto francophone writers in 1984 and served as the coordinator of the literacy centre, Alpha-Toronto, from 1988 to 1996. The award celebrates Saint-Cyr’s many contributions to Franco-Ontarian culture and community. In 2004, the Department of French Studies became the partner of la SET for the awarding of the Prix Micheline Saint-Cyr to recognize the creativity of its best students on an annual basis.