Annie Ernaux

Annie Ernaux studied at University of Rouen-Normandy, University of Bordeaux and Lycée Jeanne-d'Arc. The recorded working language is French. The field of work recorded is literary activity and literature. Nausea, Things: A Story of the Sixties and Élise ou la vraie vie are recorded as an influence. Works named in the authority record are Cleaned Out, La Place and The Years. Distinctions recorded are Prix Renaudot, Prix François-Mauriac, Prix de la langue française and Prix Marguerite Duras.

• Name — Annie Ernaux • Birth Name — Annie Thérèse Blanche Duchesne • Born — 1 September 1940 • Birthplace — Lillebonne, France • Children — 2 • Education — * University of Rouen • University of Bordeaux • Awards — Nobel Prize in Literature (2022) • Website — annie-ernaux.org

Annie Thérèse Blanche Ernaux, born Duchesne, was born in 1940 in Lillebonne in Normandy, France, and grew up in nearby Yvetot, where her parents, Blanche (Dumenil) and Alphonse Duchesne, ran a café and grocery in a working-class part of town. In 1960, she travelled to London, England, where she worked as an au pair, an experience she would later relate in 2016's Mémoire de fille (A Girl's Story). Upon returning to France, she studied at the universities of Rouen and then Bordeaux, qualified as a schoolteacher, and earned a higher degree in modern literature in 1971. She worked for a time on a thesis project, unfinished, on Pierre de Marivaux. In the early 1970s, Ernaux taught at a lycée in Bonneville, Haute-Savoie, at the college of Évire in Annecy-le-Vieux, then in Pontoise, before joining the National Centre for Distance Education, where she worked for 23 years.

Ernaux started her literary career in 1974 with Les Armoires vides (Cleaned Out), an autobiographical novel. Ernaux wrote her second book (Do What They Say or Else) in 1976, shortly after moving to Cergy-Pontoise. In 1984, she won the Renaudot Prize for another of her works La Place (A Man's Place), an autobiographical narrative focusing on her relationship with her father and her experiences growing up in a small town in France, and her subsequent process of moving into adulthood and away from her parents' place and her class of origin. Early in her career, Ernaux turned from fiction to focus on autobiography. Her work combines historic and individual experiences. She charts her parents' social progression (La Place, La Honte), her teenage years (Ce qu'ils disent ou rien), her marriage (La Femme gelée), her passionate affair with an Eastern European man (Passion simple), her abortion (L'Événement), Alzheimer's disease (Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit), the death of her mother (Une femme), along with a joint memoir with Marc Marie in which the two document their love affair through a series of photographs (L'usage de la photo). Ernaux also wrote L'écriture comme un couteau (Writing as Sharp as a Knife) with Frédéric-Yves Jeannet. A Woman's Story (Une femme), A Man's Place, and Simple Passion were recognised as The New York Times Notable Books, and A Woman's Story was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Shame was named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 1998, I Remain in Darkness a Top Memoir of 1999 by The Washington Post, and The Possession was listed as a Top Ten Book of 2008 by More magazine. Ernaux's 2008 historical memoir Les Années (The Years), well received by French critics, is considered by many to be her magnum opus. In this book, Ernaux writes about herself in the third person ('elle', or 'she' in English) for the first time, providing a vivid look at French society just after the Second World War until the early 2000s. It is the story of a woman and of the evolving society she lived in. The Years won the 2008 Prix François-Mauriac de la région Aquitaine, the 2008 Marguerite Duras Prize, the 2008 Prix de la langue française, the 2009 Télégramme Readers Prize, and the 2016 Strega European Prize. Translated by Alison L. Strayer, The Years was a finalist for the 31st Annual French-American Foundation Translation Prize, was nominated for the International Booker Prize in 2019, and won the 2019 Warwick Prize for Women in Translation. Her popularity in anglophone countries increased sharply after The Years was shortlisted for the International Booker. On 6 October 2022, it was announced that Ernaux would be awarded the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature "for the courage and clinical acuity with which she uncovers the roots, estrangements and collective restraints of personal memory". Ernaux is the 16th French writer, and the first Frenchwoman, to receive the literature prize. In congratulating her, the president of France, Emmanuel Macron, said that she was the voice "of the freedom of women and of the forgotten". Her literary work, mostly autobiographical, maintains close links with sociology. Many of Ernaux's works have been translated into English and published by Fitzcarraldo Editions and Seven Stories Press. Ernaux is one of the seven founding authors from whom the latter Press takes its name.

Ernaux supported Jean-Luc Mélenchon in the 2012 French presidential election. In 2018, she expressed her support for the yellow vests protests. Ernaux has repeatedly indicated her support for the BDS movement, a Palestinian-led campaign promoting boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel. In 2018, the author signed a letter alongside about 80 other artists that opposed the holding of the Israel–France cross-cultural season by the Israeli and French governments. In 2019, Ernaux signed a letter calling on a French state-owned broadcasting network not to air the Eurovision Song Contest, which was held in Israel that year. In 2021, after the Operation Guardian of the Walls, she signed another letter that called Israel an apartheid state, claiming that "To frame this as a war between two equal sides is false and misleading. Israel is the colonizing power. Palestine is colonized." In October 2024, Ernaux signed an open letter alongside several thousand authors pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions. In December 2025, she was one of over two hundred public cultural figures who signed an open letter urging Israel to release the jailed Palestinian leader Marwan Barghouti. In August 2026, Ernaux, along with other figures including Roger Waters, Isabel Coixet, and Matteo Garrone signed and issued an open letter to the Venice Film Festival, urging them to take "concrete" action to support Palestine. Ernaux signed a letter that supported the release of Georges Abdallah, who was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1982 for the assassination of an American military attaché, Lt. Col. Charles R. Ray, and an Israeli diplomat, Yacov Barsimantov. According to the letter, the victims were "active Mossad and CIA agents, while Abdallah fought for the Palestinian people and against colonization". Following the announcement of the award of the Nobel Prize, Ernaux showed solidarity with people's uprising in Iran against their government. The protests that followed the death of Jina Mahsa Amini, a young woman in the custody of Guidance Patrol (Morality Police) initially started against compulsory hijab law in Iran but soon took a broader focus on liberty. Ernaux said in an interview she was "absolutely in favour of women revolting against this absolute constraint".

Ernaux married Philippe Ernaux, with whom she had two sons, Éric (born in 1964) and David (born in 1968). The couple divorced in 1981. She has been a resident of Cergy-Pontoise, a new town in the Paris suburbs, since the mid-1970s, and was still living there as of 2022.

• Les Armoires vides, Paris: Gallimard, 1974; Gallimard, 1984. • * • Ce qu'ils disent ou rien, Paris: Gallimard, 1977; French & European Publications, Incorporated, 1989, • * • La Femme gelée, Paris: Gallimard, 1981; French & European Publications, Incorporated, 1987, • * • La Place, Paris: Gallimard, 1983; Distribooks Inc, 1992, • * • * • * • Une Femme, Paris: Gallimard, 1988 • * • Passion simple, Paris: Gallimard, 1991; Gallimard, 1993, • * • Journal du dehors, Paris: Gallimard, 1993 • * • La Honte, Paris: Gallimard, 1997 • Shame, translator Tanya Leslie, Seven Stories Press, 1998, • «Je ne suis pas sortie de ma nuit», Paris: Gallimard, 1997 • * • La Vie extérieure: 1993–1999, Paris: Gallimard, 2000 • * • L'Événement, Paris: Gallimard, 2000, • * • Se perdre, Paris: Gallimard, 2001 • Getting Lost, translator Allison L. Strayer, Seven Stories Press, 2022 • L'Occupation, Paris: Gallimard, 2002 • * • L'Usage de la photo, with Marc Marie, Paris: Gallimard, 2005 • * • Les Années, Paris: Gallimard, 2008, • * • L'Autre fille, Paris: Nil 2011 • The Other Girl. Translated by Alison L. Strayer. Seven Stories Press. 2025. • L'Atelier noir, Paris: éditions des Busclats, 2011 • Écrire la vie, Paris: Gallimard, 2011 • Retour à Yvetot, éditions du Mauconduit, 2013 • Regarde les lumières mon amour, Seuil, 2014 • * • Mémoire de fille, Gallimard, 2016 • * • Hôtel Casanova, Gallimard Folio, 2020 • Le jeune homme, Gallimard, 2022 • *