Description
The poet on writing July-North: In 2014, I was finishing a bachelor’s degree in literary studies and had been working for several years as a housekeeper in hotels in the metropolis. Following a breakup in love, but also in a deep malaise about living in the city, as I had grown up steeped in countryside imaginings, I decided to get closer to nature when I got a summer job as a waitress in a village bistro in Natashquan. I was 24 and living in the presbytery. When I wasn’t working, friends would take me boating, we’d gather late at night around bonfires on the beaches, or we’d gather in the houses to make music and sing. That’s when, in a few weeks, I wrote what was to become Juillet, le Nord.
Andréane Frenette-Vallières is a French-Canadian poet, essayist and researcher living in Québec. Her books, Tu choisiras les montagnes, Sestrales and Juillet, le Nord, are published by Éditions du Noroît and form a writing cycle marked by a feminist approach linked to north-coastal nature of Québec. Winner of the Félix-Leclerc Prize for poetry with Juillet, le Nord (2019), she has twice been a finalist for the Prix des libraires (2021, 2023) and twice for the Prix Émile-Nelligan (2021, 2023). She regularly participates in public readings and round tables in Quebec, Canada and internationally. Along with her writing practice, she is pursuing a research-creation doctorate in literary studies at Laval University. Her most recent essay, Tu choisiras les montagnes, has just won the Grand Prix du livre de Montréal 2023 and the Prix Spirale Eva-le-Grand 2023.
Peter Schulman is Professor of French and International Studies at Old Dominion University. He is the author of The Sunday of Fiction: The Modern French Eccentric (Purdue UP, 2003) as well as Le Dernier Livre du Siècle (Romillat, 2001) with Mischa Zabotin. He has translated Jules Verne’s last novel, The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz; and a collection of Verne’s plays A Thousand and Second Night and Other Plays, George Simenon’s The 13 Culprits, as well as a meditation on waves by Marie Darrieussecq, On Waves; Suburban Beauty from poet Jacques Reda; Adamah from poet Celine Zins; Ying Chen’s collection of haiku Impressions of Summer, Virginie Beauregard D’s The Last Runners and Silvia Baron Supervielle’s Pages of Travel. He is currently co-editor in chief of a journal of eco-criticism, Green Humanities, and has co-edited the following books: The Marketing of Eros: Performance, Sexuality and Consumer Culture (2003); Chasing Esther: Jewish Expressions of Cultural Difference (2006) and Rhine Crossings: France and German in Love and War (SUNY Press, 2005).