Noémi Lefebvre

Noémi Lefebvre was born in 1964 and lives in Lyon. Further to a PhD in music education and national identity in Germany and France, she has worked as a researcher in political science and taught research methodology for music students at university. Her four novels have been critically acclaimed in France and her UK debut, Blue Self-Portrait (2017), received intense critical acclaim on both sides of the Atlantic. Lefebvre is a regular contributor to Mediapart and the bilingual French-German literary review La mer gelée. Together with her partner the musique concrète composer Laurent Grappe, Lefebvre has produced several short videos of mock-Socratic dialogues available on YouTube, including the tantalising ‘We Are We’, commissioned by the Goethe Institut about Brexit.

Blue Self-Portrait and Poetics of Work were translated by Sophie Lewis.

Related articles and media:
‘An interview with myself’, Noémi Lefebvre for Hotel.
‘We Are We’: a short video by Noémi Lefebvre and Laurent Grappe, reflecting on nationalist discourse through film (with English transcript on Word Without Borders, April 2019).
‘In Blue Self-Portrait Noémi Lefebvre created a space to breathe’, Noémi Lefebvre interviewed for DOCUMENT Journal.

‘An extraordinary profusion of ideas. (…) According to Lefebvre, life and art are at their sharpest, and most truthful, when wrestling in the gaps between contradictions.’ — Eimear McBride, The Guardian, on Blue Self-Portrait

‘Lefebvre writes like one chasing after wild ideas, like a hiker at top speed who enjoys more than anything staying where they are, or following dead ends or winding, risky paths. What’s more, she does this while howling with laughter.’ — Les Inrockuptibles