Suzanne Jacob · Lyrikline.org

photo © Ludovic Fremaux

* 26.02.1943, Amos, Quebec, Canada
lives in: Quebec, Quebec, Canada

Suzanne Jacob was born in the town of Amos, in the Abitibi region of Québec in 1943. She is a novelist, poet, playwright, singer-songwriter, and critic. Jacob studied classics at the Collège Notre-Dame de l'Assomption in Nicolet, she also attended classes at the Atelier de theatre and the École de musique. Afterwards she moved to Montréal and studied literature and art history, being member of an experimental theatre group during that time. She taught French between 1966 and 1974 and started to write and perform monologues, poems and songs. In 1970, she won the Prix du Patriote for singer-songwriter of the year. That same year she participated in the Spa festival in Belgium.

In 1978 Suzanne Jacob published her first novel Flore Cocon and founded, together with others, the publishing house Le Biocreux where she worked as literary director for several years.

Jacob published texts in various magazines such as Liberté and La Gazette des femmes; next to her work as a writer she has also recorded music CDs. In 1992 and 1993 she was writer in residence at the University of Montréal. She has lectured in Québec, the United States, Europe and South America and is a member of the Academy of Arts and Letters of Quebec.

Her novel Laura Laur won the Governor-General’s Award and the Prix Québec-Paris in 1984. In 1997, La bulle d’encre, her essay on reading and writing, won the Prix de la revue Études françaises. In 1998, her collection of poetry La part du feu received the Governor-General’s Award and the Prix de la Société Radio-Canada. In 2007 Suzanne Jacob received the Félix-Antoine-Savard poetry prize for the group of poems entitled 'Ils ont été nombreux à répondre', which appeared in issue #125 of the literary review Estuaire.

Of her work she has said, that from the beginning she has continually tried to use fiction as a way of creating discrepancies, breaks, and uncertainty in the monolithic set of beliefs that surround us, and that without these discrepancies nothing would shake the rigidity of fundamentalism. Through her novels, poetry, short stories and essays, Suzanne Jacob dramatizes the relationship of the individual conscience with the law. She seeks out that space in everyone where we are both victim and torturer, innocent and guilty. Humor, irony, lucidity, revolt and compassion combine their tones to create her unique voice.

Suzanne Jacob
Author

Poems

Suzanne Jacob
Author