Virginie Despentes facts for kids
Quick facts for kids
Virginie Despentes
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Despentes in March 2012
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| Born | 13 June 1969 Nancy, France |
| Occupation | Novelist, filmmaker |
| Language | French |
| Years active | 1993– |
Virginie Despentes (French: [viʁ.ʒi.ni de.pɑ̃t]; born 13 June 1969) is a French writer, novelist, and filmmaker. She is known for her work exploring gender, ..., and people who live in poverty or other marginalised conditions.
Work
..... With a transgressive exploration of obscenity's limits, as a novelist or a film-maker she proposes social critique and an antidote to the new moral order. ..... She is one of the most popular French authors from this era. Her book King Kong Theory is sometimes taught in gender studies and "often passed down to millennial women as a recommendation from a cool, not-that-much-older mentor." ..... Later works such as Apocalypse Bébé (2010) and the Vernon Subutex trilogy (2015–17) received many positive reviews.
Life and career
Virginie Despentes was born as Virginie Daget in 1969. She grew up in Nancy, France, in a working-class family. Her parents were postal workers. At age 15, she was admitted to a psychiatric hospital against her will by her parents. She later noted, "I’m sure now that I would never have been locked up if I had been born a boy. The antics that caused me to end up in a psych ward were not that feral."
When she was age 17, Despentes left her home and abandoned her schooling. As a teenager, she was a hitchhiker and followed rock bands. ..... She had a switchblade in her pocket, but she was too scared to use it.
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In 1994, her first book Baise-moi was published. ..... For the book, she had taken the pen name Despentes, which was inspired by La Croix-Rousse, her old neighbourhood in Lyon. The neighbourhood was hilly; "pente" is French for hill. (Des pentes means 'from the hills') She had chosen the pen name so that her family could have some distance from the book.
Despentes moved to Paris. ..... It starred Karen Lancaume and Raffaëla Anderson. ..... After the release of the 1993 novel and the film adaptation, she became highly controversial.
Her novel Les Jolies Choses was adapted for the screen in 2001 by Gilles Paquet-Brenner, with Marion Cotillard and Stomy Bugsy in the lead roles. The film was awarded the Michel d'Ornano prize at the 2001 Deauville American Film Festival.
From 2004 to 2005, she wrote a blog that documented her daily life. Around this time she began identifying as a lesbian and started to date Spanish philosopher Paul B. Preciado before he transitioned to male.
In 2005, she wrote three songs for the album Va Chercher la Police for the group A.S. Dragon.
In 2006, she published the non-fiction work King Kong Theory.
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In 2010, her novel Apocalypse bébé was awarded the Renaudot prize.
Bye Bye Blondie was adapted for film with Béatrice Dalle and Emmanuelle Béart. Cecilia Backes and Salima Boutebal produced a stage adaptation of King Kong Theory during the "Outside" Festival d'Avignon.
In 2011, her commentary on Dominique Strauss-Kahn appeared in The Guardian.
The English translation of her novel Vernon Subutex 1 was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize.
On 18 August 2023, she was a guest celebrity judge in the episode of the Season 2 titled Showtime! of the French language reality television series Drag Race France broadcast on France.tv Slash.
Awards and distinctions
Despentes won the 1998 Prix de Flore, the 1999 Prix Saint-Valentin for Les Jolies Choses and the 2010 Prix Renaudot for Apocalypse Bébé.
She was named a member of the Académie Goncourt on 5 January 2016. Despentes resigned from this position on 5 January 2020 in order to dedicate more time to writing.
In 2018, Despentes was shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, for Vernon Subutex 1, translated into English by Frank Wynne.
See also
- List of female film and television directors
- List of lesbian filmmakers
- List of LGBT-related films directed by women
