Marianne Ackerman

Multidisciplinary

An Ontario native drawn to French culture, writer/journalist Marianne Ackerman moved to Montreal in 1981, where she undertook a career as a freelance journalist, eventually becoming theatre critic for The Gazette in 1984. Not content to observe from the sidelines, in 1988 she left The Gazette to co-found Theatre 1774, one of Quebec’s first theatre companies involving both English- and French-speaking artists. In that time, she wrote a dozen plays, twice collaborating with director Robert Lepage. In the nineties, she moved away from the theatre scene and published her debut novel in 2000. Jump was a rollicking roman-à-clé about the Montreal theatre scene in the eighties. Ackerman’s more experimental second novel, Matters of Hart, followed in 2005, but by then she was on the move again. Her latest venture is perhaps her most exciting to date: Rover Arts is a bilingual online culture review that has quickly become an essential voice in Montreal arts criticism. (DN)

Photo Credit: Andreas Sundgren, www.andreassundgren.com