Gail Scott

Gail Scott (born 1945) is a Canadian novelist, short story writer, essayist and translator, best known for her work in experimental forms such as prose poetry and New Narrative.

Born in Ottawa, Ontario in 1945, she was raised in rural Eastern Ontario and educated at Queen's University and the University of Grenoble before moving to Montreal, Quebec in 1967. Initially working as a journalist, she was a founding editor of publications such as The Last Post, Des luttes et des rires des femmes, Spirale and Tessera. Beginning in 1980, she taught journalism at Concordia University until 1991, and published novels and essay collections. While she has never published a poetry collection of her own, her prose work draws heavily on poetic forms and structures, and was anthologized in Prismatic Publics: Innovative Canadian Women's Poetry and Poetics (2009).

She was a nominee for the Governor General's Award for French to English translation at the 2001 Governor General's Awards for The Sailor's Disquiet, her translation of Michael Delisle's Le Désarroi du matelot. She has also published translations of Delisle's Helen avec un secret, Lise Tremblay's La danse juive and France Théoret's Laurence.

She has been a two-time nominee for the Quebec Writers' Federation Awards, for Heroine in 1988 and for Main Brides in 1993. With Mary Burger, Robert Glück and Camille Roy, she was a coeditor of Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative, which was a Lambda Literary Award nominee for Non-Fiction Anthologies at the 17th Lambda Literary Awards in 2005.

Her novel The Obituary was a shortlisted nominee for the 2011 Grand Prix du livre de Montreal.

She is an out lesbian.

• Spare Parts (1981)
• Heroine (1987, ISBN 978-0889224155)
• Spaces Like Stairs (1989, ISBN 978-0889611313)
• Main Brides (1993, ISBN 978-0889104563)
• My Paris (1999, ISBN 978-1564782977)
• Spare Parts Plus Two (2002, ISBN 978-1552451014)
• Biting the Error: Writers Explore Narrative (2004, ISBN 978-1552451427)
• The Obituary (2010, ISBN 978-1552452332)