Josée Sigouin is French Canadian and lives in Toronto/Tkaronto with her Chinese Canadian husband and their two sons. Until 2021, she worked at the University of Toronto, where she specialized in telling stories with numbers. Watching South Korean films and television series twenty years ago launched her on a quest to understand the fascinating culture in ever greater depth. She has learned the rudiments of the Korean language, visited the Land of the Morning Calm multiple times, and read extensively about its past and present. She also turned her attention to telling stories with words, mentored by award-winning authors Dennis Bock and Kim Echlin at the University of Toronto’s School of Continuing Studies, and Giller Prize winner Omar El Akkad at a writing residency in Bangladesh. Josée is a founding member of the Toronto-based writing group, First Page. An autobiographical piece about her creative writing journey appears in the Women Writing Letters series, Gailey Road Productions, 2016, and her literary blog. An early excerpt from Our Fifth Season (titled Intersection) was shortlisted for the 2011 Random House of Canada Student Award. In addition to travelling, Josée enjoys cycling, gardening, and welcoming birds to her tiny garden. Our Fifth Season is her first novel. She is currently working on a historical novel set in seventeenth-century Korea.
What early readers are saying about Josée’s debut novel, Our Fifth Season:
“A new, and totally engrossing take on star-crossed lovers, with a deft combination of tense drama and evocative, lyrical prose.” – Liz Torlée, author of The Way Things Fall
“Josée Sigouin eloquently navigates her protagonists’ tortuous path through a transcontinental love affair and a charge of murder.” – Michelle Alfano, author of The Unfinished Dollhouse: A Memoir of Gender and Identity
“Whether in a courtroom, a K-drama film set or scenes of quiet introspection, Sigouin’s prose glides like silk through one’s fingers. I was happily lost in the beauty of the worlds created here and missed Adam and Joanna as soon as I read the final line. A luminous story.” – Arif Anwar, author of The Storm
