Jean-Benoît Nadeau

Jean-Benoît Nadeau

Jean-Benoît Nadeau (born in 1964) is a Canadian author, journalist, and lecturer, and a Fellow of the Institute of Current World Affairs.

He is the author of Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong and The Story of French, which he co-wrote with his wife, Julie Barlow. Many of his books are about language and culture and are co-authored with Barlow.[1]

He is a regular contributor to the national French-language magazine L'actualité and a columnist for MSN.ca. He writes both in English and French and his articles have appeared in USA Today, The New York Times, The Christian Science Monitor, The Toronto Star as well as GEO and L'Express.[1]

Biography

Born in Sherbrooke, Quebec, Jean-Benoît Nadeau received a Bachelor’s degree from McGill University in 1992 where he majored in Political Science and History.

Previous to this diploma, he also tried civil engineering (at the University of Waterloo) and playwriting (at the National Theatre School).[2] This diversity of interests is reflected in the variety of articles he would later write as well as the generally broad scope of his books.

He began his journalism career in 1987, as a theatre critic for the Montreal weekly Voir. He then wrote for a variety of magazines such as Commerce, L'actualité and Québec Science.[2] In all, he has published more than 700 articles in two dozen publications.[1]

In 1993, he began writing in English for English Canadian magazines such as Saturday Night, Profit, and Report on Business Magazine.[2]

In 1997, he published his first book, Le Guide du travailleur autonome (Guide for the Self-Employed), a partly biographical book of advice to freelancers and self-employed people.[3]

In 1999, Nadeau was granted a two-year fellowship from the Institute of Current World Affairs to go to France and study “Resistance of the French to the Trend of Economics and Cultural Globalization”. During this period, he wrote reports for the Institute of Current World Affairs, on the anthropology of the French and their culture.[2]

In 2002, Nadeau wrote Les Français aussi ont un accent (The French Also Have an Accent) a quirky travelog on the experience of living in France.[2] It was published by the French publishing house Editions Payot.

In 2003, he began to co-author books with his wife, Julie Barlow. The first was Sixty Million Frenchmen Can’t Be Wrong, a book about the French people and their culture. It was translated in French (Pas si fous, ces Français!), Dutch and Mandarin.[4] There are two different Mandarin translated editions, one in simplified Mandarin, and the other in traditional Mandarin.

In 2006, Nadeau and Barlow wrote The Story of French, a history of the French language from its origins to its present evolution. This book was translated in Japanese. In French, it exists in two different versions. It appeared in Quebec in 2007 under the title La Grande aventure de la langue française, and in France in 2011 under the title Le Francais quelle histoire! This latter is an updated, second edition of the book.[5]

In 2007 Jean-Benoît Nadeau published a second edition of his book Guide du travailleur autonome (Guide for the Self-Employed)[6] as well as a new book, Écrire pour vivre (Live to Write), a practical guidebook on how to make a living from writing.[7] The books were published with Québec Amérique.

In 2010, Nadeau and his family spent six months in Phoenix, Arizona, because his wife, Julie Barlow was granted a Fulbright fellowship to research their next book, The Story of Spanish.[8] Written by Jean-Benoît Nadeau and Julie Barlow, The Story of Spanish is a book about the history of the Spanish language and will be released in April 2013 by St. Martin’s Press.[9]

Awards

2011 L’Académie des Science d’Outre-Mer (The Academy of Overseas Sciences) Prix de la Renaissance Française (French Renaissance Award)[10]

2007 Quebec Writer’s Federation Mavis Gallant Prize for Non-Fiction[11]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 "Jean-Benoît Nadeau Bio". Nadeau & Barlow. Retrieved 19 November 2012.
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Nadeau, Jean-Benoît (2007). Écrire pour vivre. Montréal: Éditions Québec Amérique. pp. 25–29. ISBN 978-2-7644-0541-3.
  3. ↑ Nadeau, Jean-Benoît (2007). Le Guide du travailleur autonome. Montréal: Éditions Québec Amérique. p. 30. ISBN 978-2-7644-0553-6.
  4. ↑ "Sixty Million Frenchmen Can't Be Wrong". Nadeau & Barlow. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
  5. ↑ "The Story of French". Nadeau & Barlow. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
  6. ↑ "Le Guide du travailleur autonome". Nadeau & Barlow. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
  7. ↑ "Écrire pour vivre". Nadeau & Barlow. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
  8. ↑ "Canada-U.S. Fulbright Visiting Scholar". North American Center for Transborder Studies. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
  9. ↑ "The Story of Spanish". Nadeau & Barlow. Retrieved 20 November 2012.
  10. ↑ "Lauréats des prix 2011". Académie des sciences d'outre-mer. Retrieved 1 November 2012.
  11. ↑ "The QWF Literary Awards". Quebec Writers' Federation. Retrieved 1 November 2012.

Published Works

External links