It is the spring of 1963. The young Quebec author Marie-Claire Blais, bursting with energy and talent, has just won a coveted Guggenheim fellowship. She chooses Cambridge, Massachusetts, as the place where she will begin her writer’s apprenticeship with her mentor, Edmund Wilson.
American Notebooks is much more than a fascinating autobiographical account of the intellectual flowering of a great writer. An album of exquisitely drawn literary portraits of companions, intellectuals, writers, musicians, artists and social activists of the period?Edmund and Elena Wilson; Mary Meigs; Maud Maugan; Barbara Deming; Truman Capote; Jacques Hébert, her first Quebec publisher, then senator; and many others?it also introduces many of the real life personalities who have inspired her fictional characters.
close this panel
Marie-Claire Blais
Born in Quebec, Marie-Claire Blais published her first novel at the age of 20, and has gone on to publish 20 novels to date in France and Quebec?all of which have been translated into English?in addition to five plays and several collections of poetry. All of her writings have met with international acclaim. Winner of the Prix Médicis, the Prix Belgo-Canadien, the Prix France-Québec and many others, Blais continues to devote herself to work that is proud and exacting.
Linda Gaboriau
Linda Gaboriau is an award-winning literary translator based in Montreal. Her translations of plays by Quebec’s most prominent playwrights have been published and produced across Canada and abroad. In her work as a literary manager and dramaturge, she has directed numerous translation residencies and international exchange projects. She was the founding director of the Banff International Literary Translation Centre. Most recently she won the 2010 Governor General’s Award for Forests, her translation of the play by Wajdi Mouawad.
