Born near Quebec City (Canada) Gaëtan Brulotte studied at Laval University (Quebec City), and earned his Ph.D. from the University of Paris VII -Ecole des hautes Etudes en Sciences sociales (France), under the direction of renown French critic, Roland Barthes (on modern French Erotic Literature).
He has authored over a dozen books so far. Click on Books or Bibliography for a short presentation of these books and some critical feedback on them. As an award-winning and widely anthologized Francophone creative writer, he published a novel L'Emprise (translated as Double Exposure) and four collections of short stories Le Surveillant (translated as The Secret Voice), Ce qui nous tient (What Holds Us), Epreuves (Testing), La Vie de biais (Life Sideways) and a play Le Client (Music Maker), which was premiered at the Avignon Drama Festival in France in 2001 and restaged afterwards. His fiction works won over fifteen literary awards. Some were also adapted for cinema, television, stage and radio.
His fiction works are translated into several languages, including English, Spanish, German, Serbian, Romanian, and Hungarian as well as featured in numerous anthologies and textbooks. Some were published in magazines from different parts of the world, including Cleo in Australia, Châtelaine in Canada, Brèves in France, Puerto del Sol in the USA, Les Cahiers du Ru in Italy, Steaua in Romania, Knjizevne Novine in Yugoslavia, Magyar Naplozi in Hungary. He has given around two hundred interviews on television, radio, in periodicals or for scholarly books concerning his works.
As a scholar, he published extensively on 20th & 21st Century French and Francophone Literature, as well as on marginalized French literary genres (such as the Erotic & Quebec short story). His critical studies have appeared as chapters of numerous books and in countless international journals such as Paragraph (England), L'Arc, Poétique, Revue des Sciences Humaines, Revue d'esthétique (France), Etudes Littéraires, Liberté, XYZ, Les Ecrits, The University of Toronto Quarterly (Canada), The Comparatist, Etudes francophones, The French Review, Sites (USA). Besides his critically acclaimed Oeuvres de chair. Figures du discours érotique (1998) his scholarly books include a collection of critical essays on contemporary French literature Les Cahiers de Limentinus. Lectures fin de siècle, published in 1998, a cultural study on a major Canadian painter, L'Univers de Jean Paul Lemieux published in 1996 with a foreword by internationally renowned writer Anne Hébert, and a reflexion on literature and creative writing, La Chambre des lucidités in 2003. He has also co-edited with a British colleague an Encyclopedia of Erotic Literature (New York: Routledge, 2006), the very first work of its kind: a comprehensive description of those innumerable works, written in many different languages throughout our known history, in which ‘sex-talk’ is the dominant discourse. This two-volume project involved hundreds of contributors from different parts of the world. His most recent book offers the very first survey of its kind of 150 years of short story production in French in Quebec and is titled La Nouvelle québécoise: this scholarly book unearthes many fascinating unknown short story writers that deserve to be brought into light.
His work is attracting more and more critical attention every year: book reviews, articles, theses, and is subject of courses at a number of colleges and universities world-wide, as well as of communications and sessions at conferences. These critical activities around his works include a monograph entitled Gaëtan Brulotte: Une Nouvelle Ecriture edited by Claudine Fisher (NY: Mellen, 1992), a collection of critical essays by seventeen scholars, a book that won in Strasbourg (France) the 1992 International Prize for Francophone Studies.
Throughout his career he has given around two hundred presentations (in French and English) in his field, either at regional, national and international conferences or as featured speaker at diverse institutions or on tours. He also serves on several literary juries and on advisory committees for journals and publishing firms.
Gaetan Brulotte is a member of many professional associations, including the International PEN Club, the UNEQ (Union des Ecrivains québécois, Montreal), the ADELF (Association des Ecrivains de langue française, Paris), the SACD (Société des Auteurs, Compositeurs et Dramaturges, Paris), the EAT (Ecrivains Associés du Théâtre, Paris), and frequently served on the board of directors of writers' societies (including the presidency of a French Canadian Writers' Society). He is figured in many national and international Who's Who publications.
He taught French & Francophone Literature at numerous universities in Canada, the United States, and France, including the University of Québec at Trois-Rivières, the University of California at Santa Barbara, the University of New Mexico, the Stendhal University (Grenoble III) in France and the Sorbonne (Paris V). He is currently Distinguished University Professor of French & Francophone Literature at the University of South Florida in Tampa, USA.
In his works he strives to bring more insights and beauty to the world.