VONARBURG, Elisabeth

(1947-)

   French-born Canadian writer, teacher and critic, in Quebec from 1973. She began publishing sf with "Maree haute" for Requiem in 1978; the tale appeared as "High Tide" in Twenty Houses of the Zodiac (anth 1979 UK) ed Maxim JAKUBOWSKI. Many of her stories (some award-winning) have been assembled as L'Oeil de la nuit ("The Eye of Night") (coll 1980) and Janus (coll 1984 France), most being set in either of 2 cycles (with great gapsin the published chronology), the more important being the Baiblancaor Mothers' Landseries, in which a semi-decadent society in a far-futureEurope sees the gradual appearance of shapeshifting MUTANTS (the "metames"). The series continues in Le Silence de la cite (1981 France; trans Jane Brierley as The Silent City 1988), whose young female protagonist leaves her underground sanctuary and goes to the surface, with its wild tribes, where she begins to transform the benighted world. Revelations of the artificial nature of the feminist governance ofMothers' Land sharpens the rite of passage story at the heart of Chroniques du Pays des Meres (1992; trans [prior to French-language publication] by Jane Brierley as The Maerlande Chronicles 1992; vt IN THE MOTHERS' LAND 1992 US). In the 2nd cycle, a Bridge serves as a door toother universes. EV is a very deliberate writer who brings great care and thought to her work, and to the depiction of characters and background. She was fiction editor 1979-90 and editor 1983-5 of SOLARIS.

LP

   Otherworks: Comment ecrire des histoires ("How to Write Stories") (1986); Histoire de la princesse et du dragon ("The Story of the Princess and theDragon") (1990); Ailleurs et au Japon ("Elsewhere and in Japan") (coll 1991); Les Voyageurs Malgre Eux (1994; trans as Reluctant Voyagers 1995.

   See also: CANADA.