Étienne Beaulieu

A writer, professor and publisher, Étienne Beaulieu runs Éditions Nota bene and teaches literature at the Cégep de Drummondville. His preferred literary genres are the literary essay, which he finds much more personal in tone than the academic study, and the prose narrative, which he considers very different from the novel given his prose philosophy. In 2014, he published a novella, Trop de lumière pour Samuel Gaska (A Surfeit of Light), which garnered the City of Montreal’s Prix Jacques-Cartier, the Grand Prix du livre de la Ville de Sherbrooke, the Prix Alfred-Desrochers and was a finalist for the Prix Chambéry (France). His historical narrative, Thomas Aubert : La Pensée et la mer, will be appearing in 2017. He has also published collections of literary essays―Splendeur au bois Beckett, Nota bene, 2016; L’âme littéraire, Nota bene, 2014; and Sang et lumière : La communauté du sacré dans le cinéma québécois, L’instant même, 2007―his doctoral dissertation, La fatigue romanesque de Joseph Joubert (1754-1824 ), Presses de l’Université Laval, 2007, as well as a collection of studies on French Romanticism, L’éclat du neutre: Études sur les cultures romantiques de la prose, Classiques Garnier, 2016. A co-founder of the literary journal Contre-jour, he has been part of the editorial team since 2002. He is in charge of critical editions of works by Joseph Joubert at Classiques Garnier in Paris.

Translator Jonathan Kaplansky

Jonathan Kaplansky studied at Tufts University and Université de Paris III, completing a Master’s in French Language and Literature at McGill University and a Master’s in Translation at the University of Ottawa. After spending several years as a translator in Ottawa and Montreal, he turned to literary translation. He won a French Voices Award to translate Annie Ernaux’s Things Seen (La vie extérieure). His translations include Days of Sand by Hélène Dorion, The Girl Before, the Girl After by Louis-Philippe Hébert, Reading Nijinsky and Wednesday Night at the End of the World by Hélène Rioux, Fugitives by Lise Gauvin, The Legacy of Tiananmen Square by Michel Cormier and No Culture, No Future by Simon Brault. He has also translated a book of poetry by Serge Patrice Thibodeau, Let Rest, a biography by Francine Legaré, Samuel de Champlain: Father of New France, and an extensive biography by Hervé Dumont, Frank Borzage: The Life and Films of a Hollywood Romantic. He has taught at the University of Ottawa and acted as a workshop leader at the Quebec Writer’s Federation, sat on the juries for the English-translation category of the Governor General’s Literary Awards and the John Glassco translation prize, and participated in various literary festivals, including Blue Metropolis and the Frye Festival.

Books by this Author

Too Much Light for Samuel Gaska