Jean-Baptiste Andrea
Jean-Baptiste Andrea was born in 1971 in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and grew up in Cannes. He is a novelist, film director and screenwriter. His debut novel, Ma Reine, won twelve literary prizes in France…
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Muriel Barbery
Muriel Barbery is the author of four previous novels, including the IMPAC-shortlisted multimillion-copy bestseller The Elegance of the Hedgehog. She has lived in Kyoto, Amsterdam and Paris and now liv…
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Anne Berest
Anne Berest is a Parisian author and journalist. She also writes for television, cinema and theatre. She was working on her third novel when Françoise Sagan’s son, Denis Westhoff, asked her to write a…
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Napoléon Bonaparte
A French general, First Consul of the French Republic (1799-1804), President of the Italian Republic (1802-1805), Mediator of the Swiss Confederation (1803-1813), Emperor of the French (1804-1814, 181…
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Miguel Bonnefoy
Miguel Bonnefoy was born in France in 1986 to a Venezuelan mother and a Chilean father. In 2013, he was awarded the Prix du Jeune Ecrivain, which previously launched the careers of Marie Darrieussecq…
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Fabrice Bourland
Fabrice Bourland has worked extensively in the magazine and publishing world and is a great admirer of Edgar Allan Poe. The Baker Street Phantom and The Dream Killer of Paris are supernatural thriller…
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Armand Cabasson
Armand Cabasson is a psychiatrist and novelist working in the north of France. The Officer’s Prey is the first in the Quentin Margont series of thrillers set in the Napoleonic Wars. It was published i…
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Edward Carey
Edward Carey was born in Norfolk, England. He is a novelist, visual artist, playwright and director. He is the author of four novels, including Little, which was a Times and Sunday Times book of the y…
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Maxime Chattam
Maxime Chattam was born in Val-d’Oise, just outside Paris. He studied criminology and worked as a bookseller before he began writing full-time. His bestselling crime novels include La Trilogie du mal…
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Michel Déon
Michel Déon, who was born in Paris and died in Galway in 2016 at the age of 97, was the author of more than 50 works of fiction and non-fiction, and a member of the Académie Française. His 1970 novel…
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Alain Ducasse
Alain Ducasse is one of the most celebrated chefs of his generation and the author of several cookbooks. Born in 1956 on a farm in Les Landes, France, he went on to train with great chefs including Mi…
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Robert Edeson
Australian author Robert Edeson trained in medicine. His professional career has encompassed consultant anaesthesia practice, as well as basic science research in pharmacology and mathematical biology…
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Tracy Farr
Tracy Farr is a writer and former research scientist. Her debut novel The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt was longlisted for the 2014 Miles Franklin Literary Award, as well as shortlisted for the 2014 We…
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Éric Faye
Born in Limoges, Éric Faye is a journalist and the prize-winning author of more than twenty books, including novels and travel memoirs. He was awarded the Académie Française Grand Prix du Roman in 201…
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Michèle Fitoussi
Michèle Fitoussi was born in Tunisia to French parents, and has lived in Paris since the age of five. She worked as a journalist at Elle Magazine for 25 years, interviewing world leaders in areas as v…
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David Foenkinos
David Foenkinos is the author of 18 novels which have been translated into more than 40 languages. His novel Charlotte won both the Prix Renaudot and the Prix Goncourt des lycéens in 2014, and The Mys…
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Marie-Louise Gagneur
Marie-Louise Gagneur was a French feminist, writer and activist, born in Domblans in 1832. She wrote essays, short stories and more than 20 novels, often focussing on anti-clericalism and issues surro…
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Pascal Garnier
Pascal Garnier, who died in March 2010, was a talented novelist, short story writer, children’s author and painter. From his home in the mountains of the Ardèche, he wrote fiction in a noir palette wi…
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Laurent Gaudé
Born in 1972, Laurent Gaudé is one of France’s most highly respected playwrights and novelists. He has won many prizes including the Goncourt in 2004 for The Scortas’ Sun, published in 34 countries. I…
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Anna Gavalda
Anna Gavalda is a French teacher and award-winning novelist. Her first short story collection, Je voudrais que quelqu’un m’attende quelque part, was published in 1999. It has been published in English…
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Stéphane Gerson
Stéphane Gerson is a cultural historian and a professor of French studies and history at New York University. He has won several awards, including the Jacques Barzun Prize in Cultural History and the…
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Hélène Gestern
Hélène Gestern was born in 1971. She teaches and researches in the field of linguistics at CNRS and sits on the editorial committee of a literary review dedicated to autobiographical writing. Her firs…
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André Gide
André Gide was a giant of twentieth-century French literature. An innovator of the novelistic form, he undertook a life-long exploration of morality in his work, and was a major influence on the writi…
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Hélène Grémillon
Hélène Grémillon worked in advertising and journalism before becoming a writer. Born in France, she currently lives in Paris with her family. The Confidant is her first novel and has been translated f…
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Stéphane Heuet
Stéphane Heuet is an artist and comics illustrator, born in Brest, France, in 1957. The son of a naval officer, he is himself a keen sailor, and in 2010 he published a collection of 18 maritime storie…
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Claude Izner
Claude Izner is the pen-name of two sisters, Liliane Korb and Laurence Lefèvre. Formally booksellers on the banks of the Seine, experts on nineteenth-century Paris and prolific writers of detective st…
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Andrea Japp
Andrea Japp is one of the grandes dames of French crime writing with over thirty novels published. She is a forensic scientist by profession and weaves this knowledge into her books, giving them parti…
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Sébastien Japrisot
Sébastien Japrisot (4 July 1931 – 4 March 2003) was a French author, screenwriter and film director, born in Marseille. His pseudonym was an anagram of Jean-Baptiste Rossi, his real name. Japrisot has…
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Yves Jégo
Yves Jégo is a politician and spokesperson for the UMP party. He is the co-author with Denis Lépée of the historical novel The Sun Conspiracy, a dazzling depiction of courtly life in 1661.
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Serge Joncour
Serge Joncour is a French novelist and screenwriter. He was born in Paris in 1961 and studied philosophy at university before deciding to become a writer. His first novel, Vu, was published by Le Dile…
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Yasmina Khadra
Yasmina Khadra is the author of more than 20 novels, including The Swallows of Kabul and The Attack, both shortlisted for the IMPAC literary award. Khadra’s work has been published in 45 countries. He…
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Fiona Kidman
Dame Fiona Kidman is a leading contemporary novelist, short story writer and poet. Kidman has won numerous awards, and she has been the recipient of fellowships, grants and other significant honours,…
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Sofie Laguna
Sofie Laguna originally studied to be a lawyer, but after deciding law was not for her, she moved to Melbourne to train as an actor. Sofie worked for many years as an actor before she began to write –…
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Charles Lambert
Charles Lambert is the author of several novels, short stories, and the memoir With a Zero at its Heart, which was voted one of The Guardian readers’ Ten Best Books of the Year in 2014. In 2007, he wo…
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Chloe Lane
Chloe Lane is a writer and founding editor of Hue+Cry Press. She was the 2022 recipient of the Todd New Writer’s Bursary and a 2021 Grimshaw Sargeson Fellow. Her debut novel The Swimmers was longliste…
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Antoine Laurain
Antoine Laurain is a novelist, screenwriter, journalist, director and collector of antique keys. A truly born and bred Parisian, after studying film, he began his career directing short films and writ…
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J. M. G. Le Clézio
Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was born in 1940 in Nice, France. His first novel, Le Procès-Verbal (The Interrogation), won the Prix Renaudot in 1963 and established him as one of France’s most importan…
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Violette Leduc
Violette Leduc was born in Arras, France, in 1907, the illegitimate daughter of a serving girl who would later blame Violette for her personal misfortunes. She was sent to boarding school, from which…
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François Lelord
François Lelord studied and practiced psychiatry in Paris, and was a consultant for companies interested in reducing stress for their employees. On a trip to Hong Kong, the Hector character popped int…
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Denis Lépée
Denis Lépée, co-author of The Sun King Conspiracy, is a local politician and environmental adviser. He is the author of books on Ernest Hemingway and Winston Churchill.
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Rowena Macdonald
Rowena Macdonald was born on the Isle of Wight, grew up in the West Midlands and now lives in East London. Her debut collection, Smoked Meat, was short-listed for the 2012 Edge Hill Prize. Her short s…
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Kirsten McDougall
Kirsten McDougall is a novelist, short story writer and creative writing lecturer. Her 2017 novel Tess was longlisted for the Ockham NZ Book Awards and shortlisted for the Ngaio Marsh Award. She’s a K…
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Guillaume Musso
Guillaume Musso was the number one bestselling author in France in 2011 and 2012. Guillaume was born in Antibes, where he still lives. After finishing high school, he spent several months as an ice cr…
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Sophie Overett
Sophie Overett is an award-winning writer, editor, podcaster and cultural producer. Her debut novel, The Rabbits, won the 2020 Penguin Australia Literary Prize and the 2018 AAWP Emerging Writer Prize,…
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Jean-François Parot
Jean-François Parot was a diplomat and historian. He is the author of the Nicolas Le Floch mysteries, which take place in eighteenth century France. The novels, beginning with The Châtelet Apprentice,…
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Heather Parry
Heather Parry was born in Rotherham and lives in Glasgow. She has won the Bridge Award for an Emerging Writer, Cove Park’s Emerging Writer Residency and the Laxfield Literary Launch Prize. In 2021 she…
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Georges Perec
Georges Perec, born in Paris in 1936, was a pioneering French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist and essayist. Orphaned from an early age, many of his works deal with absence, loss and identity, often…
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Gilles Pétel
Gilles Pétel was born and raised in Dunkirk. After studying philosophy at the Université de Nice, he spent several years abroad teaching. In 1996 his first novel, Le Métier dans le sang, was published…
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Marcel Proust
Marcel Proust was born on July 10, 1871, at 96, Rue La Fontaine in the 16th Arrondissement of Paris (Auteuil district) and died at the age of 51 on November 18, 1922, at 44, Rue Hamelin, Paris XVI. Hi…
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Jocelyne Rapinac
Jocelyne Rapinac is a modern languages teacher in London. Born in France, she has lived in the US, Switzerland and the UK with her husband James. Freedom Fries and Café Crème, transatlantic tales of f…
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Dan Rhodes
Dan Rhodes is the author of many books including Anthropology, Don’t Tell Me the Truth About Love, Timoleon Vieta Come Home, Gold and The Little White Car, among others. In 2003 he was named by Grant…
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Henrietta Rose-Innes
Henrietta Rose-Innes is a South African author of four novels and a short-story collection, and a contributing editor at the Johannesburg Review of Books. Her novel Nineveh was published in the UK and…
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Anna Sam
Anna Sam was born in Rennes, where she still lives with her husband and two dogs. After graduating from university, she worked as a supermarket checkout girl for eight years. She began to document her…
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Romain Slocombe
Romain Slocombe began his career as an illustrator working on comics and counter-culture magazines such as Métal hurlant in the late seventies and early eighties. As an artist, he was closely involved…
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Le Sonneur
Le Sonneur is a contemporary Parisian artist. His work tells the story of Paris and the people who live there. His artwork is often placed in public spaces with an invitation to passers-by to interact…
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Natsume Soseki
Natsume Soseki (1867-1916) was a Japanese writer of the Meiji period, who lived in London from 1901-03. His work influenced many later writers, including Haruki Murakami.
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Roma Tearne
Roma Tearne is a Sri Lankan-born, Oxford-based artist, film-maker and writer. She trained as a painter, completing her MA at the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art, Oxford. Her debut novel, Mosquit…
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Jean Teulé
Jean Teulé lived in the Marais area of Paris with his partner, the film actress Miou-Miou. An illustrator, filmmaker and television presenter, he was also the prize-winning author of more than ten boo…
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Lucy Treloar
Lucy Treloar was born in Malaysia and educated in Australia, England and Sweden, and worked for several years in Cambodia. Awards for her writing include the 2014 Commonwealth Short Story Prize (Pacif…
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Caroline Vermalle
Caroline Vermalle was born in France in 1973 to a family whose French roots go back at least as far as the 16th century. Yet, she is a vegetarian who can’t cook, doesn’t drink, finds berets itchy and…
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Renée Vivien
Renée Vivien was a British poet who wrote in the French language. Born Pauline Mary Tarn in London in 1877, she spent most of her life in Paris, where she was part of the glittering set of American ex…
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Bridget Walsh
Whilst working as an English teacher, Bridget Walsh completed a PhD in Victorian domestic murder. This, coupled with a love of crime fiction and an interest in what might best be described as ‘Victori…
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Damien Wilkins
Damien Wilkins is one of New Zealand’s leading writers. He is the author of short stories, poetry and seven novels, including the New Zealand Book Award-winning The Miserables and The Fainter, which w…
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Bridget van der Zijpp
Bridget van der Zijpp is the author of three novels: Misconduct, In the Neighbourhood of Fame and I Laugh Me Broken. Misconduct was shortlisted for the 2009 Commonwealth Writers’ Best First Book Prize…
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