Trivia

Biography/bibliography in: "Contemporary Authors". New Revision Series, vol. 134, pages 324-331. Farmington Hills, MI: Thomson Gale, 2005.

She was awarded the O.C. (Officer of the Order of Canada) on December 15, 1976 and the C.C. (Companion of the Order of Canada) on December 14, 1981 for her services to Canadian French Literature.

Lived on a street named in her honor in Outremont, Québec, Canada.

Maillet taught literature and folklore at the college Notre-Dame d'Acadie (1954-1960); at the University of Moncton (1965-1967); at the Collège des Jésuites de Québec (1968-1969); at the Université Laval (1971-1974); then at the Université de Montréal between (1974-1975).

Antonine Maillet was also named an honorary citizen of the City of Montreal in 2020 by Mayor Valérie Plante, who wished to highlight the mark left by "a great woman of letters, a literary icon" in the culture, history and memory of the metropolis - "the metropolis of all French-speaking people in North America".

Last November, she attended the unveiling of a stamp bearing her image at the Montreal Book Fair.

The monologues in Chiac of this real-life Acadian floor washer about the difficulties of life and poverty were performed on stage by actress Viola Léger, who played the character more than 2,000 times from 1971 to 2013, in French and English, in Canada as well as in Europe and the United States. The play was also adapted for Radio-Canada television in 1976 and inspired the creation of a theme village in New Brunswick, Le Pays de la Sagouine, which opened in 1992 on a small island in Bouctouche Bay, where the writer always said she drew her artistic inspiration.

In 2022, Maillet publicly came out as a lesbian, having been in a relationship with actress and theatre director Mercedes Palomino until her death in 2006.

In addition to having written more than fifty titles - novels, stories, plays and essays - translated into many languages, Antonine Maillet has been rewarded on numerous occasions during her writing career.

She is a member of the King's Privy Council for Canada since 1 July 1992. This gives her the right to the honorific prefix "The Honourable" and the Post Nominal Letters "PC" for Life.

A Canada Council Grant sent her to study for a year in Paris, but she returned to North America to teach at the Université de Moncton, Université Laval and Université de Montréal, settling permanently in the metropolis during the 1970s.

Her work Pélagie-la-Charrette won in 1979 the Prix Goncourt, making her the first non-European recipient.

In 1961, she left her native province to study at the Université de Montréal. Then, encouraged by a professor at Université Laval, she prepared a doctorate on Acadian oral tradition and the study of Rabelais, which led her to undertake a tour of Acadia during which she interviewed elders and drew on stories that would inspire her future works.

In 1994, the College Militaire Royal theatre group performed in a play by Maillet both at CMR and at Royal Military College of Canada. Maillet was granted an Honorary Degree from RMC in 1995.

In 2022, at the age of 93, Antonine Maillet wanted to share her legacy by writing Mon testament, a work that pays tribute to all the characters who brought her native Acadia back to life.

Maillet was awarded the Royal Society of Canada's Lorne Pierce Medal in 1980.

She was an Acadian novelist, playwright, and scholar.

Before devoting herself exclusively to writing, Antonine Maillet first worked as a schoolteacher while continuing her studies.

I want to write until I'm 100, if I live to be," she told La Presse in 2019, when her autobiography, Clin d'oeuil au Temps qui passe, was released, which coincided with her 90th birthday. In this unusually intimate book, the writer returns for the first time to her beginnings in writing, her mother's illness, her father's death, and the years she spent with her partner Mecha (the co-founder of the Théâtre du Rideau Vert, Mercedes Palomino, who died in 2006).

Along with her work as a writer and lecturer, she was often called upon to represent Acadians and their culture both nationally and internationally. For example, she was the master of ceremonies at the 8th Francophonie Summit, held in Moncton in 1999.