Background
Pierre Turgeon was born on October 9, 1947, in Quebec, Canada. Turgeon's family has deep roots within Quebec's history; his ancestors were among the first to settle in New France in 1662.
Pierre Turgeon was born on October 9, 1947, in Quebec, Canada. Turgeon's family has deep roots within Quebec's history; his ancestors were among the first to settle in New France in 1662.
In 1967, Turgeon completed his studies in literature at the Collège Sainte-Marie.
In 1969, at twenty-two, Turgeon was already a journalist at Perspectives and a literary critic at Radio-Canada. He published his first novel, Sweet Poison, in 1970. Many others would follow this coming of age book, for a total of 22 titles, fictions, essays, and theatre plays, scenarios and historical narrative.
In 1975, he founded the book company Quinze which he presided until 1978. He published the first ten issues of the theatre magazine Jeu and many authors, including Marie-Claire Blais, Gerard Bessette, Jacques Godbout, Yves Thériault, Jacques Hébert and Pan Bouyoucas.
In 1978, Turgeon became Assistant Director of the Press of the University of Montreal. Then from 1979 to 1982, he was CEO and publisher of the largest French publishing group in Canada: Sogides (l’Homme, le Jour, les Quinze,etc.).
From 1987 to 1998, Turgeon worked as a publisher of Liberté, a literary magazine which released issues on the October Crisis and on May historical and political subjects. In 1999, he created Trait d’union books which devoted itself to poetry, essays and biographies of celebrities. During all those years when he devoted himself to the books of others, he showed a sense of challenge and humanity, being sensitive to the evolution of writing and discovering new voices of Quebec literature.
The writer continued to be prolific and in 2012, he retired from his publishing venture, Transit, and decided to dedicate most of his energies to his own work. He is presently finishing two new novels and working on the remake of La Gammick, a movie thriller he wrote in 1976, about organized crime in Montreal.
As an editor and publisher with leading Montreal houses such as Editions Quinze and Editions Primeur, Pierre Turgeon has been a major influence on the contemporary Québécois literary scene by publishing such writers as Gilles Archambault. As a novelist who released his debut novel Faire sa morte comme faire l’amour in 1969 at age twenty-two, Turgeon made his own mark. That short novel would be translated into English as Sweet Poison and released to new audiences in the same volume as Coming Soon, a translation of Turgeon’s 1973 novel Prochainement sur cet écran.
Turgeon is also a co-founder of l'Illettré with Victor-Lévy Beaulieu, Jean-Marie Poupart, Jean-Claude Germain and Michel Beaulieu. He is the author of 22 books in total and of many screenplays, including a dramatization of the October Crisis.
Turgeon has created the Robert-Cliche literary price for a first novel, awarded for the first time in 1979 to Gaëtan Brulotte, in 1980 to Madeleine Monette, to Robert Lalonde in 1981 and in 1982 to Chrystine Brouillet. He also published software from 1980 to 1985, among others one of first French Text Editor (Ultratexte) and Spelling Program (Hugo).
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2014(This is the story of Canada for the new millennium, one t...)
2002(In The First Person, an embittered computer programmer wo...)
2014
