The writer and translator Lori Saint-Martin died unexpectedly on Saturday, the Éditions du Boréal announced.
Updated yesterday at 12:48pm.
Delphine Belzile The press
“It is with dismay and great sadness that we learned this morning that Lori Saint-Martin passed away suddenly in Paris in the last few hours,” the publisher wrote.
Born in Kitchener, Ontario, the writer “had a unique position on the border between Anglophone and Francophone culture,” noted Éditions du Boréal.
“Lori Saint-Martin was gifted, responding via email to La Presse Carole David, Quebec poet and novelist. Her translations, her essays on women’s writing, her novels show great generosity. She stood by her subjects like the great passers-by and pedagogues. We owe him a lot. His latest book, Translate A Necessary Good, tells all about his career as a defector. I am amazed at his death. »
Recognized in the Quebec literary community, Lori Saint-Martin has published numerous novels and collections of short stories and signed more than a hundred translations with her husband Paul Gagné, which have brought her international fame.
The author is a four-time winner of the Governor-General’s Literary Prize for his French translations of the novels A Perfume of Cedar by Ann-Marie Macdonald, Last Notes by Tamas Dobzy, and Solomon Gursky and The World After Barney by Mordechai Richler.
The literary scene “in shock”
“We are all in shock. Lori was really a person who spent a lot of time helping people. She has been a mentor to many translators,” said Mishka Lavigne, literary translator and winner of the Governor General’s Award.
“She was a great woman and a great loss to the translation. He’s someone who has always benefited from a rare oddity and delicacy,” said Alto Editions President Antoine Tanguay, with whom Lori Saint-Martin has collaborated on several occasions.
Pascale Navarro, an author and journalist from Quebec, will remember her colleague as a person who “raised women”. The two authors were set to meet in the coming days to discuss who I’m taking for, a tribute to the languages signed by Lori Saint-Martin. “She was very supportive of the other women. He was someone who rendered women’s writings, who constantly studied their words,” said Pascale Navarro.
Lori Saint-Martin’s death surprises the sad literary community. “I took her to Paris two weeks ago and she was in brilliant form. Full of projects and so happy to be in this city she loved so much,” said a great friend of the deceased, Nathalie Collard, a journalist at La Presse.
She is like a sister in literature, like a family member who will be missed.
Pascal Navarro
Flavia Garcia, originally from Argentina and a translator in Quebec for more than 30 years, chose not to testify to La Presse, still in shock. “It is with dismay, sadness and despair that I learned of the passing of my great friend Lori Saint-Martin. Lori, darling, I love you, I always will. I want to tell the whole world about the extraordinary being you were,” she wrote on social media.
Lori San-Marin made her career as a teacher at the University of Quebec in Montreal. As a specialist on Gabrielle Roy, she has also conducted several research projects within the Institute for Research and Feminist Studies at UQAM.
The writer has just been accepted into the Academy of Letters of Quebec, said Éditions du Boréal. “We would like to express our deepest condolences to his family and loved ones,” the publisher added.