CLAIRE VARIN
Claire Varin is a novelist and essay writer who has published 9 books and whose works have been translated into Spanish, English, Portuguese and Romanian and Italian. These are photos of the covers of some of her books.
BACKGROUND
Ph. D. in literature, Claire Varin is a Quebec writer and Portuguese translator. She has led several author collectives, collaborated on Radio-Canada programs, served on various juries, and taught at the University of Montreal, where she obtained her PhD in literature. In 2003, she created the Fondation lavalloise des lettres to promote literary arts. She has stayed in Brazil, among other places, to write or conduct author tours. Her essay “Langues de feu” on the writer Clarice Lispector was published in that country, and many of her texts have appeared in magazines in Canada and abroad.
According to the author, life is a series of encounters that include her relationships with animals, which she explored in her essay Animalis (Leméac éditeur, 2018).
“Rare are the books that delve so deeply and unflinchingly into our need to inject meaning into the world and teach us how to love darkness and our animalistic side.”
Maya Ombasic, Le Devoir, February 9, 2019
CLAIRE’S DO PICHO PROJECT
I’d like to continue an artistic exchange with Lisa Tognon that we started a few months ago to create an images and words project. While in residence on the island of Laval in Quebec, she was completing the creation of amulets in the image of ancient statuettes invoked to protect people, houses or populations. For my part, I was meditating on poems inspired by wildlife after years of research and writing. She had already sketched the great blue heron and the urubu; and I had already written inspired by the deer and the grizzly bear. She, my sister in creation for the protection of living things. Of water, animals and plants. I’ll be drawing on interviews with Galicians about the local flora and fauna to produce poetic texts. I’ll also be collecting information from walkers invited on an informative walk, and writing poems based on what they say about their discoveries in nature. The result will be a booklet that will leave a record in words and images of these multiple reflections in favor of living things.