My stories emerge from the tentative magic, beautiful sustenance, and obscure connections between beings, lands, creative worlds, and relations.
Fiction and essays have been published in Best Canadian Stories 2021, Prism international, the Journey Prize Anthology, the Malahat Review, Room, Prairie Fire, Grain, and the scales project, among others.
Glorious Frazzled Beings was shortlisted for the 2021 Giller Prize
Jury Citation
Menopausal gods, procreating droids and boys born as foxes are only a modest few of the glorious frazzled beings that populate Angélique Lalonde’s astonishing story collection. Many of the ever-present concerns of the contemporary world—ecology, capital, conservation, gender fluidity, addiction, inequality, indigenous displacement, and the eternal limits of human perspective—find in Lalonde a beguiling literary voice equal to the age, pushing not only at the boundaries of literature but at those of articulation and being. Lalonde gravitates here to the fable and the fairy tale, familiar and estranging in equal measure, to claw at the divide between our world and others—the animal, the alien—while inevitably falling back on, and forgiving, the ever-flawed human being.
—2021 Giller Prize Jury: Zalika Reid-Benta, Megan Gail Coles, Joshua Whitehead, Tash Aw, and Joshua Ferris
Journey Prize Anthology 31
Angélique Lalonde author photo
Angélique was the recipient of the 2019 Journey Prize for “Pooka”
Jury Citation
"Angélique Lalonde’s 'Pooka' is a contemporary classic. After a failed attempt at online fame, Pooka, a carpet collector and sculptor, must reconsider his artistic practice and its relationship to his mental health. Deftly weaving explorations of identity, isolation, and displacement with colourful and unexpected imagery, Lalonde tells a powerful story of life on the precipice. There is fear here, and an inescapable loneliness, but there is also a celebration of resilience that utterly defines this moment in literature, and society in general. Told in clean, efficient prose, Pooka’s story is both universal and deeply personal, with surprising twists and moments of dark humour that make it truly unforgettable."
—2019 Journey Prize Jury Carleigh Baker, Catherine Hernandez, and Joshua Whitehead
Read Lady with the big head chronicle part 2 in Geist and I Followed a Wolf Ghost in the scales project.
“Lady with the big head chronicle” appeared in Best Canadian Stories 2021. You can order your copy from Biblioasis.
Photo Credit: Elizabeth Larsen
Angélique was the Writer in Residence at Open Book September, 2021.
During my time as Writer in Residence I explored my writing practice as it relates to land and being in place.