Madeleine Monette Biography

Madeleine Monette is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, and poet from Quebec. Born in Montreal, she has lived in New York City since 1979. After her first novel, Le Double suspect, won the Robert-Cliche Award in 1980, she devoted herself to writing novels and short stories that combine an intimate sense of reality with an acute social consciousness, revisiting the social novel and probing at close range the notion of "Americanity", creating works that are cultural multiplexers and whose geography tends to undo the very concept of "territory", physical or imaginary. In 2007, she turned to poetry as another way to explore our subjective and physical relationship to the present world, while keeping a close eye on social reality and the historical moment. Her poems, which channel the sensuality of her novelistic writings, reconsider and renew the art of the narrative, combining fiction and poetry in a singular way. Since the early 1980s, Monette also contributed to promote Quebec and francophone literature in the United States and Europe, and as far as New Caledonia in the South Pacific. She was received into the Acadmie des lettres du Qubec (Qubec Academy of Letters) in 2007.

Literary career

Monette has published several novels: Le Double suspect (1980, Robert-Cliche Award), Petites Violences (1982), Amandes et melon (1991), La Femme furieuse (1997) and Les Rouleurs (2007). In 2000, Le Double suspect came out in English under the title Doubly Suspect. Her first book of poetry, Ciel outrances, appeared in 2013. It was translated into English in 2014 under the title Lashing Skies. Her novel Les Rouleurs was published in 2015 by Galaade Editions in Paris, under the title Skatepark.

Over the years, many of her texts were read on the radio and published in short-story collections such as Histoires de livres, Lignes de mtro, Nouvelles d'Amrique, Nouvelles de Montral, Plages; others, including poems, appeared in literary publications such as Arcade, Code-Barres, crits du Canada franais, crits, Estuaire, Exit, Libert, Moebius, Nuit blanche, Possibles, Qubec franais, Le Sabord, Trois and XYZ (in Qubec), Tessera and Virages (in English Canada), Americas' Society Review, Beacons, Women in French Studies, and Romance Language Annual (in the United States), Europe, Sud and Riveneuve-Continents (in France).

Monette was writer in residence at the Universit du Qubec Montral in 1993-1994. In 2007, she was writer in residence at the Chteau de Lavigny International Writers"? Residence in Switzerland, with the support of the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation. In 2007-2008, she was a member of the jury of the Canada-Japan Award and of the Prix Ringuet du roman de l"?Acadmie des lettres du Qubec. In 2008-2009, she reviewed American novels on Premire Chane's Vous m"?en lirez tant. Since 2009, as a member of the Acadmie des lettres du Qubec, she is a co-organizer of the annual Quebec session of Femmes-Monde La Coupole in Paris.

Since 1983 she has toured, given lectures and public readings, taken part in festivals of literature, book fairs, conferences and international meetings of writers in North America, Europe, the Caribbean, and New Caledonia in the South Pacific.

Awards and acknowledgements

Winner of the Robert-Cliche Award in 1980 for her first novel, Le Double suspect, she was also short-listed for literary awards such as the Marguerite Yourcenar Award (United States), the Prix France-Qubec Philippe-Rossillon (France), the Prix Molson and Prix Ringuet de l"?Acadmie des Lettres du Qubec and the Prix Elle Qubec (Canada). She was awarded the first Gabrielle-Roy Writing Grant in 1994, which allowed her to live in Roy's summer house on the St. Lawrence River.

Monette was featured in the literary magazine Lettres qubcoises in 2009. Many studies, essays, and theses on her work appeared in North America and in Europe, including a collective entitled Relectures de Madeleine Monette (Summa Publications, Alabama, USA, 1999). Thus, recently, an in-depth interview entitled "La Vigilance du roman", together with an essay on Petites Violences and Les Rouleurs, was published in France, by Editions de la Transparence, in La violence au fminin.

Affiliations

She is a member of the P.E.N. American Center of New York, the Centre qubcois du P.E.N. international and the Union des crivaines et crivains qubcois (UNEQ).

In 2007, she was received into the Acadmie des lettres du Qubec.

List of honors

• Robert-Cliche Award (1980)
• Gabrielle Roy Writing Grant (1994)
• Writer in Residence at UQAM - Universit du Qubec Montral (1994)
• Member of the Acadmie des lettres du Qubec (2007)

List of works

Poetry

• Ciel outrances, Editions l'Hexagone, Collection critures, Montral, 2013, 112 p.
• Lashing Skies, a translation of Ciel outrances by Phyllis Aronoff and Howard Scott, Ekstasis Editions, Victoria, Canada, 2014, 104 p.

Novels

• Skatepark, Galaade Editions, Paris, 2015, 480 p. (First published as Les Rouleurs in 2007.)
• Les Rouleurs, Hurtubise HMH, Coll. L"?arbre, Montral, 2007.
• La Femme furieuse, l"?Hexagone, Montral, 1997, 336 p. Second and third printings 1998-2000. Short-listed for the Marguerite Yourcenar Award in the US, the Elle Qubec Readers Award, the Philippe-Rossillon France/Qubec Award and the Prix Ringuet de l"?Acadmie des lettres du Qubec.
• Amandes et melon, l'Hexagone, Montreal, 1991. 466 p. Short-listed for the Acadmie des lettres qubcoises Award and the Edgar-Lesprance Award. Mass market edition, Typo, Montreal, 1997, 585 p.
• Amandes et melon, Livres Parls Daisy (Daisy Spoken Books) on CD, Bibliothque d"?Inca, narration by Madeleine Arsenault, 2005. (FD02193)
• Petites Violences, Quinze, Montreal, 1982, 242 p. Mass market edition, Typo, Montreal, 1994, 241 p.
• Le Double suspect, Quinze, Montreal, 1980, 241 p. Robert-Cliche Award. Mass market editions, les Quinze, Coll. 10/10, Montreal, 1988 and 1991. 2nd mass market edition, Typo, Montreal, 1996, 228 p.
• Doubly Suspect, transl. by Luise von Flotow, Guernica Editions, Toronto, 2000, 144 p.