Montreal's Heather O'Neill wins Quebec book prize

Heather O'Neill's debut novel Lullabies for Little Criminals has won the ParagrapheHugh MacLennan Prize for fiction from the Quebec Writers Federation.

Lullabies for Little Criminals, chosen by CBC Radio's Canada Reads panel earlier this year, is also in contention for a Governor General's Award.

O'Neill, 32, triumphed over Neil Smith's Bang Crunch and Liam Durcan's Garcia's Heart to win the $2,000 award.

Short story collection Bang Crunch was the jury's choice for the McAuslan First Book Prize.

Other winners at the awards gala in Montreal Wednesday night were:

• Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-fiction: Julie Barlow and Jean-Benot Nadeau, The Story of French.
• A. M. Klein Prize for Poetry: David Solway, Reaching for Clear: The Poetry of Rhys Savarin.
• Translation Prize, French to English: Lazer Lederhendler, The Immaculate Conception, a translation of L'Immacule conception by Gatan Soucy.

Lullabies for Little Criminals is the story of a young girl making her way through Montreal's underworld.

"This was one of those rare books that kept me up reading in the middle of the night, made me laugh out loud and brought me to tears," one juror said.

"I can honestly say that the book expanded my capacity for empathy, which to me is among the greatest potential triumphs of fiction."

Smith, also a Montrealer, has won honourable mention at the National Magazine Awards, first prize at the Eden Mills Writers' Festival and has been nominated for the Journey Prize three times.

The jury praised his short story collection Bang Crunch for "characters and situations [that] are quirky and unique, but not just for the sake of being weird they are full-blooded and well-formed, genuine."

Barlow and Nadeau collaborated on what the jury described as "a fascinating journey through the history of the French language" with The Story of French.

It is the second non-fiction collaboration for the husband-and-wife writing partnership after 2003's Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong.

Each prize comes with a cash award of $2,000.