Against the Wind

Madeleine Gagnon has made a mark on Quebec literature as a poet, novelist, and non-fiction writer. Born in Amqui, a little village in the Matapedia Valley, she decided at the age of twelve to be a writer, and after her early education with the Ursuline nuns, went on to study literature, philosophy, and psychoanalysis at the Universite de Montreal, the Sorbonne, and the Universite d'Aix-en-Provence, where she received her doctorate. Since 1969, she has published over thirty books while at the same time teaching literature in several Quebec universities. Her work in all genres combines passion, lucidity, erudition, poetic vision, and political commitment, boldly transgressing the boundaries between poetry and prose. Among her many awards are the prestigious Athanase-David Prize (2002) for her lifetime body of work, the Governor General's Award for Poetry (1990) for Chant pour un Quebec lointain (translated by Howard Scott as Song for a Far Quebec), and the Journal de Montreal Prize (1986) for Les Fleurs du catalpa. Her work has also won international recognition, with many publications in France and some fifteen translations into English, Spanish and Italian. Nancy Huston has described Madeleine Gagnon as someone in whom the boundary between inner and outer life is porous; her words are poetry and her ear for the words of others is poetry too. Everything she takes in from the world is filtered, processed, transformed by the insistent rhythms of the songs within her. Phyllis Aronoff lives in Montreal. She has a master's degree in English literature. The Wanderer, her translation of La Quebecoite by Regine Robin, won the 1998 Jewish Book Award for fiction. She and Howard Scott were awarded the 2001 Quebec Writers' Federation Translation Award for The Great Peace of Montreal of 1701. She is currently president of the LTAC. Howard Scott is a Montreal literary translator who specializes in the genres of fiction and non-fiction. He is a past president of the Literary Translators' Association of Canada. His literary translations include works by Madeleine Gagnon and Quebec science fiction writer Elisabeth Vonarburg. In 1997, Scott received the prestigious Governor General's Translation Award for his work on Louky Bersianik's The Euguelion. In 1999, his translation of "The Eighth Register," a science fiction story by Alain Bergeron, won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History for best short-form.