Bourse ADEFFI / Ambassade de France
« Début de carrière » 2025–2026

This award will fund my research trip to the 2025 iteration of Quais du polar, a crime fiction festival which takes place annually in Lyon. The festival draws together readers, publishers and high-profile crime fiction authors from around the world, particularly from France and francophone countries, and hosts film screenings, cultural events and even mystery tours in honour of France’s rich tradition of crime writing. The festival’s programme is largely comprised of public interviews, roundtable discussions between authors and academics, and panel discussions on topics ranging from genre diversification to the contemporary crime novel’s efforts to grapple with climate change, political extremism and racism. Recent iterations of Quais du polar have laid heavy emphasis on the interactions between gender, feminism and genre in contemporary French crime fiction which are part of Ciara’s nascent research project on le polar féministe, an emerging subgenre of French crime fiction. Her trip to the festival will allow her to meet and interview several of the authors whose work is described as feminist crime fiction, kickstarting that portion of her research which considers feminist crime writing in the context of both public feminist activism and the rising tide of anti-feminist sentiment online and in real life.