“With all its honesty, Journal is a moving account of a brief yet remarkable life.” — Literary Review of Canada

“Gripping and beautifully written. A work of art imbued with desire, loneliness, sadness, suffering but, above all, an ode to life.” — Lettres québécoises

Written shortly before her death from bone cancer at the age of twenty-six, Marie Uguay’s Journal weaves together prose and poetry to chronicle her philosophical questioning and her erotic longing for an impossible love. Despite the surgical changes imposed on her body and her mounting loneliness, Uguay’s work evokes a lust for life and a passionate pursuit of artistic ambition. Journal, edited by Stéphan Kovacs and translated by Jennifer Moxley, demonstrates both the maturity of Uguay’s voice and the raw emotions in her writing process, cementing her place in the Québecois literary scene.

Born in Montréal in 1955, Marie Uguay died of cancer in 1981. Her brief, dazzling career ensured her a special place in the Québécois literary landscape. Between her first poems, published in the early 1970s, and her death in 1981, she published three collections: Signe et rumeur, L'outre vie, and Autoportraits. Uguay was posthumously awarded the Émile Nelligan Prize for her body of work, and the Maison de la culture of the Ville-Émard district in Montréal was named after her.

Marie Uguay's profile page

Poet, essayist, and translator Jennifer Moxley is the author of seven books of poetry, most recently Druthers. Her book The Open Secret was awarded the Poetry Society of America’s William Carlos Williams award and was a finalist for the Kingsley Tufts award. Her books of essays include For the Good of All Do Not Destroy the Birds and There Are Things We Live Among: Essays on the Object World. Moxley has translated several books from the French, including Anne Portugal’s Absolute bob, Jacqueline Risset’s Sleep’s Powers, and The Translation Begins. In addition, she wrote the introduction for the volume Nicole Brossard: Selections, edited by Pierre Joris and Jerome Rothenberg. She has served as a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowships (U.S.). Moxley teaches creative writing, poetics, and translation at the University of Maine.

Jennifer Moxley's profile page

“Both a sombre prelude to death and an exuberant celebration of life, it provides a unique perspective on Quebecois poetry in the 1970s and ’80s … With all its honesty, Journal is a moving account of a brief yet remarkable life.”

Literary Review of Canada