Whitby author’s debut fiction collection nominated for prestigious Atwood Gibson prize

Whitby poet and author Canisia Lubrin’s debut work of fiction, Code Noir, has been nominated for the prestigious Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize.

This award is considered among the top three literary awards granted to Canadian authors alongside the Governor General’s Award and the Giller Prize.

The award has been granted to a single author each year, as voted by a literary jury, since 1997. Previous winners include the likes of Alice Munro (Runaway), Joseph Boyden (Three Day Road), Lawrence Hill (The Book of Negroes), Emma Donoghue (Room), Patrick DeWitt (The Sister’s Brothers) and André Alexis (Fifteen Dogs).

This year the the jury is made up of authors Saeed Teebi (Her First Palestinian), Joan Thomas (Five Wives) and Uchechukwu Umezurike (Wish Maker). It’s their job to decide the best work from five writers:

• Éric Chacour of Quebec – What I Know About You (translated by Pablo Strauss)
• Conor Kerr of Edmonton, Alberta – Prairie Edge
• Canisia Lubrin of Whitby, Ontario – Code Noir
• Fawn Parker of Fredericton, New Brunswick – Hi, It’s Me
• Sheung-King of Toronto – Batshit Seven

Lubrin originally hails from the Caribbean island nation of St. Lucia and came to Canada to study. After achieving degrees from both York and Guelph Universities, she settled in Whitby.

She launched her literary career in 2017 with Voodoo Hypothesis, a poetry collection described as “a subversion of the imperial construct of ‘blackness’ and a rejection of the contemporary and historical systems that paint black people as inferior, through constant parallel representations of ‘evil’ and ‘savagery.'”

Her debut met with extensive critical acclaim including a Gerald Lampert Award, a Pat Lowther Award and a Raymond Souster Award nomination. She released a second acclaimed poetry collection, The Dyzgraphxst, in 2020.

The Dyzgraphxst gave Lubrin her first brush with the Canadian Literary “Triple Crown” when it was nominated for the Governor General Award. This second release led The Globe and Mail to name her Poet of the Year.

Next, she released her first collection of short fiction, Code Noir. Publisher Penguin Random House describes the work as “that rare work of art—a brilliant, startlingly original book that combines immense literary and political force.”

The book is named after the real Code Noir, a series of royal decrees King Louis XIV of France issued in 1685. These decrees defined the French involvement in the slave trade. These rules persisted for more than a century, until the beginning of the French Revolution in 1789.

“The original Code had fifty-nine articles; Code Noir has fifty-nine linked fictions—vivid, unforgettable, multi-layered fragments filled with globe-wise characters who desire to live beyond the ruins of the past,” Penguin wrote of the work.

“Ranging in style from contemporary realism to dystopia, from futuristic fantasy to historical fiction, this inventive, shape-shifting braid of stories exists far beyond the enclosures of official decrees. This is a timely, daring, virtuosic book by a young literary star,” they continued.

Echoing this acclaim the Atwood Gibson jury wrote, “A collection that is profound and inveterately inventive, Code Noir expands what is possible in the realm of narrative. With purposeful defiance, Lubrin writes stories that cut effortlessly across eras and continents with the Black diaspora, within and against a history of institutionalized violence and oppression.”

“She pushes against the laws governing what words can and can’t do, emerging finally with a sharp-edged language that is entirely sui generis. Lubrin’s work is conceptual genius, allusive across a wide swath of culture, from jazz to literature to art. Code Noir is a singular achievement.”

The Writers’ Trust will announce the Atwood Gibson Award winner on November 19. This winner will receive $60,000 while each nominee will receive $5,000. Former Blackberry CEO Jim Balsillie has sponsored the award.

The Historical Code Noir and French Slavery

France proper had abolished slavery at home way back in 1315 under King Louis X. However, this abolition did not apply to France’s overseas colonies.

Starting centuries later, France abducted countless people from Africa and shipped them around the continent as well as to the Caribbean, Louisiana and New France (now modern Quebec, Maritimes and most of Ontario).

Initially, most enslaved people in New France were Indigenous but most were Black by the time Britain abolished slavery in the Empire in the 1830s.

(For timeline context, the French established New France in Canada under explorer Jacques Cartier in 1535. It remained French until the British seized the Canadian territories in 1763. Napoleon I later sold the remaining Louisana territory to the United States in 1803. The American slavery system persisted until it was finally abolished in 1865 after the Civil War.)

When Louis XIV issued the Code Noir in 1685, he mandated all the people France enslaved to convert to Catholicism. It also prescribed a list of punishments slaveholders could dole out to their captives. While it banned the worst it still permitted harsh treatment.

However, the Code Noir also led to a large increase in the free Black population in the French Empire. While free Black French subjects still faced many restrictions under the code, they were the most likely to be literate and own businesses than their peers in other contemporary Empires.

The Code Noir persisted in French colonies for roughly 110 years until the practice was abolished in 1794. However, this progress proved short-lived. Napoleon reinstituted slavery for sugar-growing colonies in 1802. It remained legal in French colonies until 1847.