Among the selection of 257 texts in competition, reduced to 34 by a committee of eleven readers, the members of the jury unanimously designated the short story by Christophe Carpentier, A masterful echoas winner of the Jacques Sadoul prize. The author stands out against Audrey Pleynetpour Lucie19xMe, Sammy Sapin pour The Twenty-Eighth Vow, Eric Abbel pour The Day the Stars Turned Around et Vincent Tassypour Schedulewho were the favorites of this edition.
Christophe Carpentier therefore wins the sum of 2,000 euros as well as a three-week writing session at La Laune in Petite Camargue and an original drawing byEddie Ponspress cartoonist and president of the association Les Avocats du Diable. The author will be rewarded in May 2025 at the Imaginales festival in Épinal and on the occasion of the publication of a collection including fifteen texts from the prize.
A prize for “bad genre” texts
Launched this year, the Jacques Sadoul prize is a short story competition which rewards the best “bad genre” text, judged according to its quality of writing, its originality, the creativity demonstrated by the author, etc. For its first edition, its theme was science fiction – chosen from the detective genres; eroticism and romance; fantasy and alchemy; fantasy and esotericism – and for contextual phrase “ I’m going to the café to read the newspaper from the day before yesterday », taken from the collection I am all ears with a distracted eye (J’ai Lu), which compiles the best aphorisms of Jacques Sadoul. This author, editor and anthologist was one of the first to publish SF, fantasy, esotericism and horror for a wide audience through the J’ai Lu collections of which he was editorial director for thirty years.
The jury, chaired by Barbara Sadoulis composed of Sistine Audebert, Philippe Béranger, Morgane Caussarieu, Jean-Pierre Dionnet, Marion Mazauric, Nicolas Rey, Jean-Luc Rivera, Christophe Siébert, Jerome Vincent, Philippe Ward et Joëlle Wintrebert.
The second edition will be launched on December 8, Jacques Sadoul’s birthday. The association Les Avocats du Diable will communicate the annual theme as well as the contextual sentence, always taken from the collection I am all ears with a distracted eye.
