Jeanne Benameur

Jeanne Benameur was born in Algeria to Italian and Tunisian-Algerian parents in 1952. The family fled the country right before the official declaration of the Algerian War of Independence, and moved to La Rochelle, in France, where Jeanne grew up. After her first poetry collection, Naissance de l’oubli (1987), came several novels for young adults, inspired by her experience as a teacher in Paris inner city secondary schools. In 2002, she received the UNICEF Prize for her novella Les Demeurées, which would be loosely adapted for ARTE television twenty years later. A bestselling and prolific writer of fiction and non-fiction, she has won multiple national and regional readers’ awards. Her work is frequently adapted for the stage and music performances and has been translated into several European languages.