About - Raymond Beauchemin

Raymond Beauchemin sits on the steps of a a home, holding a script

Author, playwright, actor, home cook

How we identify is also how we connect.

My fiction and my drama circle themes of identity: boys learning how to become men; men wondering how it is they got there; and the girls and women who accompany them on their journeys.

And as an actor, you’re always playing with identity, right? Just not yours. Or, just as importantly, finding personal experiences to use to create a character.

As for cooking? That’s just fun and fulfilling.

And now for some specifics

Meaning this is the bio (short version)

I was born in a small town in western Massachusetts, developed my love for reading and writing in schools and my small bedroom there. My 40-year career in journalism began at the now-defunct Transcript-Telegram in Holyoke. From there, I’ve had stints as an editor at the Hartford Courant, Boston Herald, Montreal Gazette, The National (Abu Dhabi) and Toronto Star.

My fiction writing started the way many careers that way do: with lots of ego and even more rejection letters. It took almost 20 years after earning my master’s in creative writing before I published my first novel. (There was some dues paying with the editing of literary anthologies and running a reading series.) And then a further dozen years before my collection of Abu Dhabi novellas came out.

Now out of the journalism field (not entirely my choice), I find myself with two collections of short stories looking to be published, two plays given professional love, and more ideas for stage and screen percolating. It’s a great time to be alive and creating.

None of this life and creation would be possible, of course, without the love and support of family. First of firsts is writer Denise Roig, my partner, my wife, my editor, my idea-bouncer-off-her, the one who drives me crazy and keeps me sane. Georgia and Ariel, our beautiful daughters, inspirations both, for different reasons; Pierre, idea-bouncer-off-him and partner in movie-watching; and the grandchildren, receptive audiences of jokes and meals. I remember being asked, like we all are at some point, for my favorite season of the year. My default answer was fall. Now, I’d say, it’s the week to 10-day period in midsummer and around Christmas when all of us are together in Hamilton, or those not-frequent-enough weekends in Montreal throughout the rest of the year.

And that’s about it for the “about” section!