Clémentine Mélois won the Medusa Prize for So that’s good while the back-to-school prize went to Emma Becker for The Pretty Evil.
The first awards are in. Novelists Clémentine Mélois and Emma Becker have won the first prizes awarded during the 2024 literary season, the juries announced on Wednesday, August 21.
The most quickly awarded prize since 2022 is the Méduse Prize, which this year went to Clémentine Mélois for So that’s good (L’Arbalète editions). The jury had made its decision on 1is August, three weeks before the story hits bookstores. So that’s good pays tribute to a father who passed on this creative fantasy to him, the sculptor Bernard Mélois, by recounting his last years and his burial.
The back-to-school prize went to Emma Becker for The Pretty Evil (Albin Michel editions), which tells a story of adulterous love with another writer.
Multiple awards
The back-to-school literary festival will present other awards, including the revelation prize for our colleague Alice Develey, with Fallen from the skyan autobiographical novel about anorexia, and the first novel prize for Ruben Barrouk with All the noise of Guéliz published by Albin Michel, which follows the life of an old woman from Marrakech.
Traditionally, the prizes of the festival Les écrivains chez Gonzague Saint Bris (formerly La Forêt des Livres) follow, awarded on the last weekend of August in Chanceaux-près-Loches, in Touraine. The most prestigious prizes, including the Goncourt, are awarded in late October and early November.