Marie-Claire Blais was a renowned Canadian writer, novelist, poet, and playwright from the province of Québec. Born on October 5, 1939, she was the eldest of five children in a blue-collar family. Blais studied at a convent school but had to interrupt her education at 15 to seek employment as a clerk and later as a typist.
She enrolled in a few classes at Université Laval at 17, where she met professor and literary critic Jeanne Lapointe and priest and sociologist Georges-Henri Lévesque, who encouraged her to write. Blais published her first novel, La Belle Bête, in 1959, at the age of 20, and received a grant from the Canada Council of Arts to begin writing full-time.
She moved to Paris and later to the United States, initially living in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and then in Wellfleet, Massachusetts. Blais was helped by American literary critic Edmund Wilson, who introduced her to artists and writers in Cape Cod, including feminist Barbara Deming and writer and painter Mary Meigs. The three lived together in Wellfleet for six years, and Blais remained a longtime partner of Mary Meigs until her death in 2002.
During this time, Blais was awarded two Guggenheim Fellowships. In 1975, she moved back to Québec and divided her time between Montréal, the Eastern Townships of Québec, and Key West, Florida, where she maintained her permanent home.
Blais became a Companion of the Order of Canada in 1972 and was a four-time recipient of the Governor General's literary prize for French-Canadian literature. Many of her works have been adapted for other formats, including a ballet by the National Ballet of Canada, a movie by Karim Hussain, and several other films.
