A unique and powerful portrait of referendum and post-referendum Montreal. Published in Quebec in 1996, Aurora Montrealis shot to the top of the best-seller lists and confirmed Monique Proulx's position as one of the top Quebec fiction writers of her generation.

In all of these stories -- about disintegrating relationships, yearning housewives, survivors of political and literary wars, people at the very centre of the Quebec dream and those excluded by it -- the true hero is the city of Montreal itself, a rapidly changing, indefinable city, which not only provides the backdrop of its inhabitant's lives, but is the essential force with which they must deal.

Monique Proulx is one of Quebec’s most popular authors. A novelist, story writer and screenwriter, she has published six works of fiction, including Sex of the Stars, The Invisible Man at the Window, Aurora Montrealis, The Heart Is an Involuntary Muscle, which was a finalist for the 2002 Governor General’s Award for fiction (French language) and a selection for the 2004 CBC Canada Reads competition, and Wildlives. She also won the 1993 Prix Québec-Paris, le Signet d’Or de Plaisir de lire, le Prix des libraires du Québec and le Prix littéraire Desjardins. She lives in Montreal, Quebec.

Monique Proulx's profile page

Matt Cohen was born in Kingston, Ontario in 1942. He received his B.A. and M.A. from the University of Toronto. In the late 1960s he taught political economy at McMaster University before becoming a full-time writer. Since 1969 he has published twenty books, including novels, short stories, poetry and two books for children.

He received critical acclaim for many of his books, notably `The Salem Novels` - The Disinherited (1974), The Colours of War (1977), The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone (1979), Flowers of Darkness (1981), and Emotional Arithmetic (1990). He was short-listed for the Governor General's Award in 1979 for The Sweet Second Summer of Kitty Malone and was a finalist for the 1988 Ontario Trillium Award for his short story collection Living on Water. As well, his short stories have twice won National Magazine Awards, and his books have been translated into Dutch, French and Portuguese.

Matt Cohen died in 1999.

Matt Cohen's profile page