Anne F. Garréta
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Anne Françoise Garréta is a French novelist and a member of the experimental literary group
Oulipo Oulipo (, short for ; roughly translated as "workshop of potential literature", stylized ''OuLiPo'') is a loose gathering of (mainly) French-speaking writers and mathematicians who seek to create works using constrained writing techniques. It wa ...
. She is the first member of Oulipo to be born after the group's founding. Her awards include the Prix Médicis.


Life and career


Early life and academic career

Anne Garréta was born in 1962 in Paris. In 1982 she graduated from the
École normale supérieure École or Ecole may refer to: * an elementary school in the French educational stages normally followed by Secondary education in France, secondary education establishments (collège and lycée) * École (river), a tributary of the Seine flowing i ...
. She was a professor of literature from the 17th and 18th centuries at the
University of Princeton Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
before being appointed ''maître de conférences'' at the
University of Rennes 2 Rennes 2 University (UR2; , officially Université Rennes-II Haute-Bretagne) is a public university located in Upper Brittany, France. It is one of the four universities of the Academy of Rennes. The main campus is situated in the northwest of ...
in 1995. She is currently teaching at
Duke University Duke University is a Private university, private research university in Durham, North Carolina, United States. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity, North Carolina, Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1 ...
as a Research Professor of Literature and Romance Studies.


Oulipo

Garréta met Oulipian writer
Jacques Roubaud Jacques Roubaud (; 5 December 1932 – 5 December 2024) was a French poet, writer, and mathematician. Life and career Jacques Roubaud taught mathematics at University of Paris X Nanterre and poetry at EHESS. A member of the Oulipo group, he h ...
in Vienna in 1993, and was invited to present her work at an Oulipo seminar in March 1994, and again in May 2000, which led to her joining the Oulipo. She won the
Prix Médicis The Prix Médicis () is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by and .
in 2002 for her novel ''Pas un jour''. /sup> awarded each year to an author whose "fame does not yet match their talent" (she is the second Oulipian to win the award—
Georges Perec Georges Perec (; 7 March 1936 – 3 March 1982) was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was killed in the Ho ...
won in 1978). Garréta has also contributed to ''La Bibliothèque oulipienne'', a collection of short texts written by members of Oulipo. Garréta wrote two texts for this collection: ''N-amor'' (2007) and ''Tu te souviens… ?'' (with Valérie Beaudouin, 2007).


Writing career

Garréta's first novel, ''Sphinx'' (Grasset, 1986), hailed by critics, tells a love story between two people without giving any indication of grammatical gender for the narrator or the narrator's love interest, A***. Published when the author was twenty-three years old, ''Sphinx'' is the first novel by a female member of Oulipo to be translated into English. Her second novel, ''Ciels liquides'' (Grasset, 1990), tells the fate of a character losing the use of language. In ''La Décomposition'' (Grasset, 1999), a serial killer methodically murders characters from
Marcel Proust Valentin Louis Georges Eugène Marcel Proust ( ; ; 10 July 1871 – 18 November 1922) was a French novelist, literary critic, and essayist who wrote the novel (in French – translated in English as ''Remembrance of Things Past'' and more r ...
's In Search of Lost Time. In her book ''Not One Day'' she is “recollecting one woman whom she’s desired or who has desired her” every day for a month.


Awards

*
Prix Médicis The Prix Médicis () is a French literary award given each year in November. It was founded in 1958 by and .
(2002) for the novel ''Pas un jour''


Works

* ''Sphinx'' (Grasset, 1986); English translation by Emma Ramadan (Deep Vellum, 2015). Spanish translation by Julia Larravide, "Esfinge" (Ethos Traductora, 2020). * ''Pour en finir avec le genre humain'' (Editions François Bourin, 1987) * ''Ciels liquides'' (Grasset, 1990) * ''La Décomposition'' (Grasset, 1999) * ''Pas un jour'' (Grasset, 2002); English translation by Emma Ramadan, ''Not One Day'' (Deep Vellum, 2017). Spanish translation by Sara Martin Menduiña. "Ni un dia" (EDA Libros, 2017) * ''Éros Mélancolique'' (with Jacques Roubaud) (Grasset, 2009) * ''Dans l'beton'' (Grasset, 2017); English translation by Emma Ramadan, ''In Concrete'' (Deep Vellum 2021)


References


External links


An extract from the English Translation of SphinxAnother extract from the English translation of Sphinx
{{DEFAULTSORT:Garreta, Anne F. French women writers Oulipo members Prix Médicis winners 1962 births Living people Academic staff of Rennes 2 University Novelists from Paris Place of birth missing (living people)