Dominique Fortier


Dominique Fortier is a Canadian novelist and translator from Quebec, who won the Governor General's Award for French-language fiction at the 2016 Governor General's Awards for her novel Au péril de la mer.
A graduate of McGill University, she published her debut novel Du bon usage des étoiles in 2008. That book was a shortlisted Governor General's Award finalist at the 2009 Governor General's Awards, and its English translation by Sheila Fischman, On the Proper Use of Stars, was a finalist for the Governor General's Award for French to English translation at the 2010 Governor General's Awards. Her second novel Les Larmes de Saint-Laurent was published in 2010, and its English translation by Fischman, Wonder, was a finalist for the translation award at the 2014 Governor General's Awards.
In 2014, Fortier and Nicolas Dickner published Révolutions, a collaborative project for which they each wrote a short piece each day for a year based on a word chosen from the French Republican Calendar.
Fortier is also a three-time nominee for the Governor General's Award for English to French translation, garnering two nominations at the 2006 Governor General's Awards for her translations of Mark Abley's Spoken Here: Travels Among Threatened Languages and David Suzuki and Wayne Grady's Tree: A Life Story, and at the 2012 Governor General's Awards for her translation of Margaret Laurence's The Prophet's Camel Bell.
In 2020 she received the Prix Renaudot essay for Les villes de papier''.''

Works

  • Du bon usage des étoiles, 2008
  • Les Larmes de saint Laurent, 2010
  • La porte du ciel, 2011
  • Révolutions, co-published with Nicolas Dickner, 2014
  • Au péril de la mer, 2015
  • Les villes de papier : une vie d'Emily Dickinson, 2018
  • Pour mémoire : petits miracles et cailloux blancs, co-published with Rafaële Germain, 2019
  • Les ombres blanches, 2022
  • Quand viendra l'aube, 2022

    Awards and honors

  • 2011: Prix Gens de mer du Festival Étonnants voyageurs
  • 2016: Governor General's Award for French-language fiction
  • 2018: Prix de traduction de la fondation Cole
  • 2019: Prix littéraire des lycéens AIEQ
  • 2020: Prix Renaudot
  • 2023: Prix Malesherbes, le Libraire du roi
  • 2025: Longlisted for the International Dublin Literary Award