The Prix Goncourt is a prize in French literature, given by the académie Goncourt to the author of "the best and most imaginative prose work of the year". The prize carries a symbolic reward of only 10 euros, but results in considerable recognition and book sales for the winning author. Four other prizes are also awarded: prix Goncourt du Premier Roman, prix Goncourt de la Nouvelle, prix Goncourt de la Poésie (poetry) and prix Goncourt de la Biographie (biography). Of the "big six" French literary awards, the Prix Goncourt is the best known and most prestigious. The other major literary prizes include the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française, the Prix Femina, the Prix Renaudot, the Prix Interallié and the Prix Médicis.
The Prix Décembre, originally known as the Prix Novembre, is one of France's premier literary awards. It was founded under the name Prix Novembre in 1989 by Philippe Dennery. In 1998, the founder resigned after he disapproved awarding of the prize to Michel Houellebecq's novel Atomised. The prize then got a new patron – Pierre Bergé – and a new name: Prix Decembre.
Shan Sa is the pseudonym of Yan Ni, a French author and painter. The Girl Who Played Go was the first of her novels to be published outside France, and won the Prix Goncourt des Lycéens. Her second novel to appear in English translation was Empress (2006). She was awarded chevalier of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in July 2009 and chevalier of the Ordre national du Mérite in May 2011.
Hervé Le Tellier is a French writer and linguist, and a member of the international literary group Oulipo. He is its fourth president. Other notable members have included Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, Jacques Roubaud, Jean Lescure and Harry Mathews. He won the 2020 Prix Goncourt for The Anomaly.
Abdellatif Laâbi is a Moroccan poet, journalist, novelist, playwright, translator and political activist, born in 1942 in Fes, Morocco.
Jean Echenoz is a French writer.
Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a Belgian novelist, photographer and filmmaker. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has had his photographs displayed in Brussels and Japan. Toussaint won the Prix Médicis in 2005 for his novel Fuir, second volume of the « Cycle of Marie », a four-tome chronicle published over ten years and displaying the separation of Marie and her lover. His 2009 novel La Vérité sur Marie, third volume of the cycle, won the Prix Décembre.
Linda Coverdale is a literary translator from French. She lives in Brooklyn, New York, and has a Ph.D in French Literature. She has translated into English more than 60 works by such authors as Roland Barthes, Emmanuel Carrère, Patrick Chamoiseau, Maryse Condé, Marie Darrieussecq, Jean Echenoz, Annie Ernaux, Sébastien Japrisot, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Philippe Labro, Yann Queffélec, Jorge Semprún, Lyonel Trouillot, Jean-Philippe Toussaint, Jean Hartzfeld, Sylvain Tesson and Marguerite Duras.
Louis-Philippe Dalembert is a Haitian poet and novelist. He writes in both French and Haitian creole. His works have been translated into several languages. He now divides his home between Paris and Port-au-Prince.
Serge Teyssot-Gay is a French musician, he has been the guitarist of rock group Noir Désir until 29 November 2010. He met the other members of the band at their school in Bordeaux during the 1980s. Aside from Noir Désir, his other musical endeavours include :
Laurence Ruel, known by her pen name Camille Laurens, is a French writer and winner of the 2000 Prix Femina for Dans ces bras-là. Laurens is a member of the Académie Goncourt.
Agnès Desarthe is a French novelist, children's writer and translator.
Bernard Comment is a Swiss writer, translator, scriptwriter, and publisher of books.
Pierre Lemaitre is a Prix Goncourt-winning French author and a screenwriter, internationally renowned for the crime novels featuring the fictional character Commandant Camille Verhœven.
Mathias Énard is a French novelist. He studied Persian and Arabic and spent long periods in the Middle East. He has lived in Barcelona for about fifteen years, interrupted in 2013 by a writing residency in Berlin. He won several awards for Zone, including the Prix du Livre Inter and the Prix Décembre, and won the Prix Goncourt/Le Choix de l’Orient, the Prix littéraire de la Porte Dorée, and the Prix du Roman-News for Rue des Voleurs. He won the 2015 Prix Goncourt for Boussole (Compass). In 2020 he was Friedrich Dürrenmatt Guest Professor for World Literature at the University of Bern.
Catherine Cusset is a best-selling French novelist and the author of Life of David Hockney: A Novel, The Story of Jane, and 12 other novels published by Éditions Gallimard between 1990 and 2018. Some of her novels are described as autofiction, a French literary movement that is a hybrid of fiction and autobiography. Others are more romantic, but all share some recurring themes: the family, desire, and cultural conflicts between France and America. She stands out from her contemporaries with a direct, incisive, visual form of writing, marked by the influence of Anglo-Saxon novelists.
Yannick Haenel is a French writer, cofounder of the literary magazine Ligne de risque.
Brigitte Giraud is a French writer, author of novels and short stories. She was awarded the 2022 Prix Goncourt for her autobiographical novel Vivre vite.
Ben Faccini is an English novelist, writer and translator.
Georges-Olivier Châteaureynaud is a French novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the Prix Renaudot in 1982 for the novel La Faculté des songes and the Prix Goncourt de la nouvelle in 2005 for Singe savant tabassé par deux clowns. He has been general secretary of the Prix Renaudot since 2010.
