Gabrielle Roy

(pen name of Marcelle Carbotte). Born 1909 in Saint Boniface, Manitoba. Canadian writer.

Roy writes in French. She is one of the first French Canadian realists to write about urban workers. Her first novel, Tin Flute (1945; Russian translation, 1972), is well known. It truthfully depicts the life, character, and psychology of the residents of a workers’ suburb of Montreal. The novel Where Nests the Water Hen (1950) describes the life of pioneers on the prairie. Cashier (1954) is a novel about the hopeless dreams of the average man. The semiautobiographical book Street of Riches (1955) deals with childhood spent on the prairie. Roy also wrote the novel Hidden Mountain (1961), which is about a talented artist from the people, and the short-story collection Road Past Altamont (1966).