The Sandbar is a collection of vignettes from The Sandbar, a small-town watering hole in Northern Michigan owned by an eccentric couple with a penchant for stiff drinks. At an early age, their nephew gains an appreciation for exotic cocktails and for the quirky intricacies of family relations. The Sandbar follows Nephew’s experiences as a displaced Québécois youth growing up at the bar against the backdrop of such monumental events as the Detroit riots, Marilyn Monroe’s death and the beginnings of the Hippie movement. The Sandbar is a snapshot of the 1950s and ’60s “Golden Age” of America, following a family and the colourful clientele of their privately-owned cocktail lounge.

Jean-Paul Daoust is a Québécois poet, essayist, and author. He has published thirty books of poetry and two novels since 1976, including Les cendres bleues which won the Governor General’s Award in 1990. Daoust received the Grand Prix at the Trois-Rivières Poetry Festival in 2009 for Le vitrail brisé and the Gatien-Lapointe-Jaime Sabines Poetry Prize in 2012.

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Susan Ouriou is an award-winning literary translator who has translated the fiction of Quebec, Latin-American, French and Spanish authors. She won Canada’s Governor General’s Literary Award for Translation in 2009 for Pieces of Me by Charlotte Gingras, after first being shortlisted for The Road to Chlifa by Michèle Marineau and then for Necessary Betrayals by Guillaume Vigneault. The Road to Chlifa was also awarded an honour list placing by IBBY (International Board of Books for Youth) as were Naomi and Mrs. Lumbago by Gilles Tibo, This Side of the Sky by Marie-Francine Hébert and Pieces of Me. Necessary Betrayals was also voted one of the 100 best books of 2002 by the Globe and Mail. Another translation, The Thirteenth Summer by José Luis Olaizola, was runner-up for the John Glassco Translation Prize. She has worked as the director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre and as faculty for the Banff Centre's Aboriginal Emerging Writers residency. She is the editor of the 2010 anthology Beyond Words – Translating the World.

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