Gwenaëlle Aubry

After two years of preparatory classes at the Lycée Henri-IV in Paris, Aubry began her studies at the École Normale Supérieure in 1989 at the age of eighteen, earning an agrégation in Philosophy in 1992. She then received the Knox Scholarship at Trinity College, Cambridge, where she earned a Master of Philosophy. In 1999 she received a Doctorate in Philosophy from the Université de Paris IV-Sorbonne.[1]

She was a lecturer in ancient philosophy at the Université de Nancy II from 1999 to 2002. She now serves as a Director of Research at the Centre national de la recherche scientifique [National Center for Scientific Research][2] and an associate member of the Centre international d'étude de la philosophie française contemporaine [International Center for the Study of Contemporary French Philosophy] (ENS-Ulm).[3] She is also a member of the reading committee at the Théâtre national de la Colline.[4] She is married to the philosopher Quentin Meillassoux.[5]

She published her first novel, Le Diable détacheur, in 1999.

2002 saw the publication of L'Isolée, which was inspired by Florence Rey, and then revised and expanded in 2003 with the addition of the short narrative L'Isolement.

In 2007, after a residence at the Villa Medici,[6] she published Notre vie s'use en transfigurations, excerpts of which were staged by Sarah Oppenheim for the play "Donnez-moi donc un corps!", put on in 2017 by the Théâtre du Soleil.[7]

In 2009, Aubry received the Prix Femina for Personne, an alphabet-novel, which is a portrait of a melancholic "from twenty-six angles with nothing at the center".[8][9][10] The book was also short-listed for the Prix Médicis, the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie française, the Prix Novembre, and the Prix de Flore. It has been translated into a dozen languages and was published in the United States as No One in Trista Selous's translation with a preface by Rick Moody.[11]

In 2012 Partages came out, a "book of hauntings", which mirrors, sometimes on alternating pages, the voices of two young girls, one Jewish, the other Palestinian, in Israel during the Second Intifada. It was long-listed for the Prix Goncourt and was a finalist for the Grand Prix du Roman de l'Académie française.

In 2015, she published "Lazare mon amour", a prismatic portrait of Sylvia Plath, in L'Une et L'Autre. She then adapted it into a play, which was published separately in 2016.

In 2016 the autobiographical novel Perséphone 2014 came out. Performed by the author and accompanied by the guitarist Sébastien Martel, the text was also staged by Anne Monfort on the occasion of the tenth Festival de Caves.[12] Partial translations into English have appeared from Benjamin Eldon Stevens (Arion, winter 2018, 25.3: 161-173)[13] and from Wendeline A. Hardenberg (Asymptote, April 2019).[14]

In 2018 her novel La Folie Elisa was published.[15] A staged version featuring Aubry, guitarist Sébastien Martel, and Judith Chemla was performed in November 2018.[16]

Aubry produced a radio play adaptation of Hermann Broch's The Death of Virgil for France Culture and has written literary studies of Yves Bonnefoy, W. G. Sebald, and Georges Perec, as well as short works published in magazines and journals, particularly La Nouvelle Revue française. She is also the author of several books and a number of articles on ancient philosophy and its contemporary reception, as well as a translator from ancient Greek (Plotinus, Porphyrus, Proclus). In 2018 Genèse du Dieu souverain. Archéologie de la puissance II was published, the second volume following Dieu sans la puissance.[17][18]

• Le Diable détacheur, Actes Sud, 1999 (reissued by Mercure de France, 2012, winner of the Bourse Cino Del Duca)
• L'Isolée, Stock, 2002
• L'Isolement, Stock, 2003 (L'isolée/L'isolement, reissued by Mercure de France, 2010)
• Plotin. Traité 53 (I, 1) Introduction, translation, commentary and notes, Cerf, Collection Les Ecrits de Plotin, 2004
• Notre vie s'use en transfigurations, Actes Sud, 2007
• Dieu sans la puissance: Dunamis et Energeia chez Aristote et chez Plotin (essai), Vrin, 2007
• Le moi et l'intériorité, Vrin, 2008 (editor)
• Personne, Mercure de France, 2009 (winner of the Prix Femina)
• Partages, Mercure de France, 2012
• Lazare mon amour, L'Iconoclaste, 2016
• Perséphone 2014, Mercure de France 2016
• Genèse du Dieu souverain. Archéologie de la puissance II, Vrin, 2018
• La Folie Elisa, Mercure de France, 2018