Michel Basilières
# Michel Basilières

Michel Basilières (born 1960 in Montreal) is a Canadian writer, best known for his 2003 debut novel Black Bird.

## Background

Basilières, the son of a Québécois father and an English Canadian mother, grew up as an anglophone despite his French surname. He studied creative writing at Concordia University, but dropped out before graduating, and spent much of his adult life working in bookstores in both Montreal and Toronto.

## Career

Black Bird was published in 2003 as part of Knopf Canada's New Faces of Fiction series of works by emerging writers. A comic, magic realist take on the October Crisis of 1970, the novel won the 2004 Books in Canada First Novel Award, and was shortlisted for the Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour and the Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel.

Following his award win, Basilières was a freelance book reviewer for the Toronto Star, the National Post and The Globe and Mail, and taught creative writing at the University of Toronto.

His second novel, A Free Man, published in 2015, was a ReLit Award finalist in 2016.

## Awards

Awards for Basilières's writing :

| Year | Title | Award | Result |
| - | - | - | - |
| 2004 | Black Bird | Books in Canada First Novel Award | Winner |
| 2004 | Black Bird | Commonwealth Writers' Prize for Best First Novel | Shortlist |
| 2004 | Black Bird | Stephen Leacock Memorial Medal for Humour | Shortlist |
| 2016 | A Free Man | ReLit Award for Novel | Shortlist |

## Publications

* Black Bird. Vintage Books. 2003. ISBN 978-0-676-97528-4.
* A Free Man. a misFit book. 2015. ISBN 978-1-770-41233-0.
