Michel Tremblay

Born in a working-class family in Québec, novelist and playwright Michel Tremblay was raised in Montréal's Plateau-Mont-Royal neighbourhood. An ardent reader from a young age, Tremblay began to write, in hiding, as a teenager. Now one of the most produced and most prominent playwrights in the history of Québecois and Canadian theatre, Tremblay has received countless prestigious honours and accolades. Because of their charismatic originality, their vibrant character portrayals, and the profound vision they embody, Tremblay's dramatic, literary and autobiographical works have long enjoyed remarkable international popularity; his plays have been adapted and translated into dozens of languages and have achieved huge success in Europe, the Americas, and the Middle East.

Tremblay's novel The Fat Woman Next Door Is Pregnant was longlisted for the CBC Canada Reads program in both 2002 and 2003. In April 2006 – as Montréal concluded its term as World Book Capital – he was the recipient of the Blue Metropolis International Grand Literary Prize, awarded annually in recognition of a lifetime of literary achievement to a writer of international stature and accomplishment.