MONTREAL - Novelist Dany Laferrière is the winner of the 2010 Blue Metropolis International Literary Grand Prix. The $10,000 award recognizes the excellence of a writer with an international reputation.

Laferrière immigrated to Canada from Haiti in 1978. He has written 16 novels, including How to Make Love to a Negro (1987) and Heading South (originally published in French in 2006 as Vers le sud). Both books were made into feature films. His children’s book Je suis fou de Vava won a Governor General’s Literary Award in 2006.

L'Énigme du retour, his latest novel, currently tops the French-language category on The Gazette's bestseller list.

His novel I Am a Japanese Writer, (the translation of Je suis un écrivain japonais, 2008) about a novelist suffering from writer’s block who finds out he is famous in Japan for a book he never wrote, will be published in English next fall.

Laferrière, who divides his time between Montreal, New York and Miami, will be presented with the prize during the Blue Metropolis Montreal International Literary Festival, which runs from April 21 to 25.

Click here for more on Blue Metropolis, April 21-25, 2010.