The winners of the 2nd Boé short story competition were rewarded last weekend as part of the literary forum Les Marque-pages de Boé. In first place, Émilie Bourdenx, and her story “Fluvial Transport”, with an unexpected fall. Meet.
“In Boé, on the edge of the canal, the Moon flooded the towpath”, a sentence that would leave many of us wondering, but not Émilie Bourdenx. “I immediately had images in my head!”, says the one who, from this imposed theme, wrote “Fluvial Transport”, a story that seduced the jury of the 2nd Boé short story competition, meeting at the occasion of the literary forum Les Marque-pages de Boé last Sunday.
Its history takes us back to the golden age of river transport, when men and horses combined their forces to move freight boats along the canal. A universe in which the author did not know, a priori, not much, except what she had been able to read in the period novels that she always liked to devour. “I saw the scenes very precisely, in the old fashioned way, with the horses”, says Émilie Bourdenx. “I like the old days, this kind of film too,” she adds.
In her daily life, the young woman does not bathe in the world of literature. “What I write are reports…!” laughs the amateur author. Indeed, she is quality manager at the laboratories of the Agen-Nérac and Villeneuve-sur-Lot hospitals. But from this scientific universe, Émilie Bourdenx has drawn a certain rigor. “I was told that my short story was easy to read, maybe that comes from my professional experience where everything I write must be clear,” suggests the latter.
Always rigorous, the author got down to real documentary work before embarking on writing her short story. “I read the works of Jacques Dubourg and Jean-François Ratonnat on the canal, I also have my companion who has a boat license, I left nothing to chance!”, confides Émilie Bourdenx. In her story, the protagonists must transport wine between Toulouse and Agen, before taking up the pen, the author wanted to estimate the duration of such a trip, to better understand all that entails.
Daily life aboard a coutrillon
Provisions, life aboard the coutrillon, marine knots, nothing is left to chance. Just like her hero, Émilie Bourdenx was passionate about the canal and its golden age and it shows in her lines. “Once all the elements were in mind, it came on its own!”, testifies the young woman. A fluid style that obviously hit the mark with the 12 jurors of this 2nd Boé short story competition. Émilie Bourdenx won the first prize, a year after her first participation, to her great surprise.
“I was very surprised to be in the three winners. I heard the name of the third one, I didn’t pay attention, but after the second one, I said to myself ‘damn, I’m first!’ recalls the author, with a broad smile. “It’s very gratifying”, she adds. Beyond the pride of having risen to first place in this competition, Émilie Bourdenx received a prize worth 300 euros.
Enough to make this Boétienne want to take up the pen again… “It makes you want that’s for sure, and then people told me that they wanted to know what happened next… But it’s good to have a framework, like this limit of 10,000 characters and this imposed theme,” she says. See you in 2023?
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