Germaine Guèvremont

Who was Germaine Guèvremont?

Germaine Guèvremont, born Grignon was a Canadian writer, who was a prominent figure in Quebec literature.

Born in 1893 in Saint-Jérôme, Quebec, she was educated in Quebec and Toronto, and worked as a journalist for women's magazines before marrying Hyacinthe "Hy" Guèvremont and moving with him to Sorel in 1916. She was a housewife for a number of years, but later returned to journalism as a writer for The Gazette and an editor for Le Courrier de Sorel. The Guèvremonts later moved to Montreal, where Germaine worked as a court stenographer during the Great Depression. She also began to publish short stories, which were compiled into her debut book, En plein terre, in 1938.

She published the novel Le Survenant in 1945, followed by the sequel Marie-Didace in 1947. The Outlander, an English translation of her two novels in one volume, was published in 1950, and won the fiction prize in the 1950 Governor General's Awards. The book was also published in the United Kingdom under the title Monk's Reach. She did not publish any further novels, but continued to publish journalism and short stories as well as writing radio and television adaptations of her fiction works. She began to write her memoirs late in life, but completed only two chapters before her death in 1968.