Québec Literature Today: An Evening with Nicole Brossard, Michel Jean, Kim Thúy and Lise Tremblay

The event is hosted by the Department of Languages and Literatures in collaboration with the EUTOPIA Alliance and is held in conjunction with the symposium 21st-Century Quebec Literature: New Trends, New Voices (23–25 September 2026). The discussion will be moderated by Françoise Sule and Alice Duhan.

The full symposium programme is available here

About the authors

Nicole Brossard has been a major figure in Québec literature since the 1970s and is a key voice in feminist and queer writing internationally. Describing herself as an “explorer of language,” Brossard has developed a body of work that is at once experimental and sensual, challenging familiar habits of reading and inviting us to see language anew. Among her best-known works is the novel Le Désert mauve (1987), which playfully unsettles the boundary between original and translation. Brossard is the author of some forty books spanning poetry, fiction, essays, and theory.

Michel Jean is a writer and journalist whose novels foreground Indigenous histories and experiences in Canada. In his award-winning novel Kukum (2019), he draws on his own family history to tell the story of his great-grandmother Almanda, who falls in love with the young Innu man Thomas. Through their story, Jean also traces the profound disruption of traditional Innu ways of life over the course of the twentieth century, as communities were subjected to forced settlement and assimilation. Kukum has become an international success and was published in Swedish in 2025.

Kim Thúy arrived in Québec at the age of ten after leaving Vietnam with her family as refugees. This experience is at the heart of her debut novel, Ru (2009), which achieved major international success and has been translated into many languages, including Swedish. Alongside her novels, known for their spare and luminous prose, she has also written the cookbook Le Secret des Vietnamiennes (2017), in which recipes are interwoven with family memories.

Lise Tremblay is an award-winning author whose fiction casts a perceptive eye on contemporary Québec society. In a direct, pared-down style, her novels and short stories explore class, family tensions, and the divide between urban and rural life. Her acclaimed short-story collection La Héronnière (2003) portrays life in an isolated rural community, where social divisions play out against the backdrop of a vivid natural world whose presence is felt throughout. Several of Tremblay’s works have been translated into Swedish, most recently Judiths syster (2026).