Graduated from the University of Montreal, Beauchemin worked for many years as a host and producer for Société Radio-Canada. He published his first novel, Comme enfant je suis cuit (1998), and gained wider attention with Le jour des corneilles (2004), which won the Prix Jean-Hamelin. Around that time, he suffered a serious illness that led him to leave Radio-Canada to recover and devote himself to writing full-time. La fabrication de l’aube, a philosophical novel about a man confronting his mortality, was published in 2006 and won the Prix des Libraires du Québec in 2007.