Bio

Chantal Ringuet is a Canadian award-winning author and translator.

After her PhD in Literature, she has published two collections of poetry (Le sang des ruines, 2009 Jacques-Poirier literary award; Under the Skin of War, 2014, inspired by the works of British photojournalist Don McCullin) and a cultural essay on Yiddish Montreal (À la découverte du Montréal yiddish) followed by an anthology featuring some of her translations (Voix yiddish de Montréal, 2013). With Gérard Rabinovitch, she has published Les révolutions de Leonard Cohen (PUQ, 2016), which received a 2017 Canadian Jewish Literary Award, and wrote the Duetto Leonard Cohen, one of her favorite poets. With Pierre Anctil, she has published a translation of the early biography of Marc Chagall (Mon univers. Autobiographie, 2017). Since then, she has published an essay on Leonard Cohen (dans Chanteurs poètes, Plon 2021), an autobiographical narrative entitled Alys Robi a été formidable (Québec Amérique, 2021) and a poetry book entitled Forêt en chambre (Le Noroît). Some poems from this collection accompanied those of Marie-Claire Blais in the show Les seuils muets (Conservatoire d'art dramatique de Québec, 2022). She has participated in the artists' books Three Conversations honouring Jean-Paul Riopelle (2023) and The Song of Odessa (2024).

She has been a Fellow of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, Scholar-in-Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute (Brandeis University) and Writer-in-Residence and literary translator in residence at the Banff Centre for the Arts and Creativity for her work on Yiddish poets Rachel (Rokhl) Korn and Kadya Molodowsky. In 2019, she has inaugurated the residence in creative writing at Reykjavik, UNESCO City of Literature for her project Treelessness. Following this residence, she has published a poetry book, Forêt en chambre (Le Noroît, 2022).

Her works focus on the relationship between text and image, intertextuality, memory and history, literary and cultural theory, translation, notions of exile, migration and intergenerational transmission. She travels through languages and delves into the musicality of literature.

Selected Interviews

The Translator Relay, Words Without Borders, 2019

Interview When Translation Becomes Homage, Words Without Borders, 2018

Literary Awards and Honours

Canadian Jewish Literary Award, cat. Jewish Thought and Culture, 2017

YIVO Fellow, New York, 2015-2016

Prix littéraire Jacques-Poirier, 2009

Research-Creation Grants (selection)

Grants from the Canada Council for the Arts (CAC)

Grant from the Conseil des arts et lettres du Québec (CALQ)

Grant from the Conseil des arts de Montréal (CAM)

Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council (SHHRC)

Grant from the Fonds de recherche québécois en sciences et culture (FRQSC)