John Glassco was born on December 19, 1909 in Montreal, Canada into a wealthy family. He attended McGill University but dropped out in 1928. He moved to Paris in 1928 and remained there for three years. He had to return home to Canada when he became sick with tuberculosis. From 1952 to 1954, Glassco was the mayor of Foster, Quebec.

John Glassco’s first published poem was Conan’s Fig which was printed in This Quarterly magazine.  During his time in Paris from 1928 to 1931, Glassco became a part of the expatriate writers group known as the “lost generation .” Like many of the group he was more interested in the social life of the time than the actual creating of art. He later wrote a slightly fictionalized memoir of those days entitled Memories of Montparnasse which was published in 1970.  John Glassco wrote three novels and published several books of poems. In 1971 he won the Governor General’s Award for his Selected Poems. Glassco also was a very well respected translator; the John Glassco Translation Prize is given to the author with the best first book length translation of a book into French or English.

John Glassco died on January 21, 1981.

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