François Ricard (4 June 1947 – 17 February 2022) was a Canadian writer and academic from Quebec.

[1] He was a professor of French literature at McGill University since 1980, including a special but not exclusive focus on the work of Milan Kundera and Gabrielle Roy,[2] and has published numerous works of non-fiction.

[2] He was a founder of the literary journal Liberté,[2] has served on the editorial boards of the publishing houses Éditions Sentier and Éditions du Boréal,[2] and has contributed to both Radio-Canada and Télé-Québec as a literature reviewer and a host of documentary programming on Quebec literature and history.

[3][4] He won the Governor General's Award for French-language non-fiction at the 1985 Governor General's Awards for La littérature contre elle-même,[1] and Gabrielle Roy: A Life, an English translation by Patricia Claxton of his 1996 book Gabrielle Roy, une vie, won the 1999 Drainie-Taylor Biography Prize[5] and the Governor General's Award for French to English translation at the 1999 Governor General's Awards.

[6] The original French edition of Gabrielle Roy, une vie was a shortlisted nominee for the Governor General's Award at the 1997 Governor General's Awards,[7] and Le dernier après-midi d’Agnès: essai sur l’oeuvre de Milan Kundera was nominated at the 2003 Governor General's Awards.