Gisèle Villeneuve
Gisèle Villeneuve is a Calgary-based bilingual writer working in multiple genres. Educated dans sa langue maternelle à Montréal, she honed her other tongue, English, while living in London, England. As a novelist, short story writer, poet, and translator, she delights in alternating freely between French and English. Her novel, Visiting Elizabeth, is to date her most complex hybrid of Canada’s two official languages and cultures. Rising Abruptly, stories in English that are a distillation of her mountain experiences, won the Fiction & Poetry Award at the International Banff Mountain Film and Book Festival, the Georges Bugnet Award for Fiction and the Alberta Book Publishing Award, Trade Fiction category.
Her other more recent publications include nue et crue lettre au poète disparu, a writer’s notebook in French, in which poetry, prose, fiction and nonfiction share the page; and Outsiders, a collection of stories in French. In her current works-in-progress, she continues to develop a “tongue print” that celebrates her two languages’ shared similarities rather than antagonism and friction. Before choosing to concentrate exclusively on the creative writing life, Gisèle has also worked as voice coach, narrator, editor, radio journalist and documentarian, scriptwriter, TV researcher, magazine writer and playwright. Originally from Montréal, she has resided in England and the United States and has travelled five continents before landing firmly in Calgary. When not at her desk, she can be found roaming the Rockies.
Auteure bilingue de Calgary, Gisèle Villeneuve pratique plusieurs genres littéraires. Romancière, nouvelliste, poète et traductrice, elle prend grand plaisir à passer librement du français à l’anglais. Ses oeuvres les plus récentes incluent Rising Abruptly, un recueil de nouvelles en anglais couronné de plusieurs prix et dont les textes s’appuient sur son expérience en montagne; nue et crue lettre au poète disparu, un carnet d’écrivain dans lequel la prose et la poésie, la fiction et l’essai partagent la page; Outsiders, un recueil de nouvelles en français; et Visiting Elizabeth, un roman bi-langue. Gisèle fut également coach de voix, narratrice, rédactrice, journaliste et documentariste de radio, scénariste, recherchiste et dramaturge. Originaire de Montréal, elle a habité en Angleterre et aux États-Unis et elle a voyagé sur cinq continents. Entre ses travaux d’écriture, elle va souvent prendre l’air dans les Rocheuses.
