Jeanne Benameur

Jeanne Benameur was born in Algeria to Algerian and Italian parents, who emigrated to La Rochelle in France when she was five. Further to a career in teaching, she worked as an editor, before devoting herself to her own writing in 2001. Her first novels, for young adult readers (Samira des quatre-routes, and Adil, coeur rebelle) were inspired by her experience as a teacher and published in the early 1990s but her first publication was the poetry collection Naissance de l’oubli (Escaping Memory). Benameur became a prolific writer of fiction, non-fiction, poetry and plays, winning multiple national and international awards, notably the 2002 UNICEF Prize for her debut short novel Les Demeurées (The Idiot Women), the Grand Prix RTL-Lire award, as well as several regional readers’ prizes in France, and the Corsican readers’ award 2021. A screen adaptation of Les Demeurées is in production for the European culture TV channel ARTE. Her writings have been translated into many languages, and several of her works have been adapted for live music performance.