The Canadian Embassy, The department of Modern and Classical Languages The North American Studies program present Nicole Brossard George Mason University

Born in Montréal (Québec), poet, novelist and essayist, Nicole Brossard published her first book in 1965. Since then, she published 19 collections of poetry, eight novels, a play, many essays and several pieces for the radio; she is the co-editor of the film Some American Feminists (1986). Some of Brossard’s novels include Mauve Desert (1987), Picture Theory (1990), and her latest novel Baroque d’aube (1995), her 30^th publication in 30 years, which has been translated into English as Baroque at Dawn. Other titles include: Daydream Mechanics (1980), These our Mothers (1983), French Kiss (1986), Lovhers (1986), The Aerial Letter (1988), and Surface of Sense (1989).

Brossard is an active participant in international colloquia and conferences on literature and feminism. She has won the Governor General’s Award twice for her poetry in French, for Mécanique jongleuse (1974), and Double impression (1984) and le Grand Prix de la poésie de la Fondation Les Forges in 1989 and 1999. Le Prix Athanase David, which is for a lifetime of literary achievement, was attributed to her in 1991. The same year she received The Harbourfront Festival Prize. In 1994, she was made a member of L’Académie des Lettres du Québec. She co-founded and edited the influential literary magazine La Barre du Jour (1965) and La Nouvelle Barre du Jour (1977).

Brossard has been Québec’s leading feminist voice since the early 70s. In 1976, she co-directed the film Some American Feminists. Her work has been translated in different languages and has appeared in many U.S. anthologies. Mauve desert, Baroque at Dawn and Installations are among her books translated into Spanish. In 1991, she published a trilingual (French, English and Spanish) collection of poems, La nuit verte du parc labyrinthe and in 1998, she published a bilingual edition of an autofiction essay entitled She would be the first sentence of my next novel/Elle serait la première phrase de mon prochain roman which she read partly at George Mason when she was last here. A new book of her poetry in translation has come out: Installations (published 1989 in French; translated by Erin Mouré and Robert Majzels). In 2001, the Conseil des Arts et des Lettres du Québec awarded her a grant and a studio in New York to work on a book of poetry.

On 14^th March, at 7:30, Nicole Brossard will be a special guest at George Mason University to speak about her body of writing. This event is open to everyone.

For more information contact Professor Janine Ricouart 3E5 GMU

or check my web page: http://mason.gmu.edu/~jricouar

Sponsored by the Canadian Embassy, the GMU department of Modern and Classical Languages and North American Studies Program in the Studies of the America program.

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