France Théoret

France Théoret, poet, novelist, essayist (born 17 October 1942 in Montreal, QC). In 2012, she received the Prix Athanase-David, highlighting her contribution to Quebec literature.

Career

A professor at CEGEP Ahuntsic from 1968 to 1987, France Théoret obtained a master's degree from the Université de Montréal in 1977 for a thesis on Claude Gauvreau, and in 1982 a doctorate from the Université de Sherbrooke for a thesis on writing.

A leading figure in Quebec feminism, Théoret contributed to the "new writing" movement, closely associated with the magazine Les herbes rouges in the 1970s and 1980s. Bloody Mary (1977), Une voix pour Odile (1978), Vertiges (1979), Nécessairement putain (1980), collections of prose poems and short stories, written in a demanding and spirited style, bear witness to the collective suffering of women, while exploring in a very personal way the depths of a subjectivity that never ceased to question its past, its identity, its body and its society. Since 1982, with the publication of her first novel, Nous parlerons comme on écrit, Théoret has favoured narrative prose without sacrificing poetry: L'homme qui peignait Staline, narratives, 1989; Journal pour mémoire, 1993; Laurence, novel, 1996; Une mouche au fond de l'il, poetry, 1998. She collaborated with numerous magazines, including La Barre du jour and co-founded the magazine Spirale, which she edited from 1981 to 1985. In 1987, she published a book of essays entitled Entre raison et déraison. In 2004, Théoret published her novel Les Apparatchiks vont à la mer noire, a story about the Stalinist movement that was raging in Montreal during the 1970s.

In 2006, the novel Une belle éducation was published, earning Théoret a reputation as an assured novelist. Set at the beginning of the book, in the Saint-Henri district during the late 1950s, the story focused on a most eloquent family portrait. While at this time the neighborhood was considered one of Montreal’s poorest, the father, a grocer, left the big city and bought an inn in the country. The whole family had to work hard to keep the inn afloat and survive. Sacrifices were made, including the narrator’s education, a determined young woman for whom, like many girls of the time, education was the only way out.