Colombe Schneck

Colombe Schneck is a French journalist, filmmaker, and writer. Born in 1966 into a bourgeoise Parisian-Jewish family, she went on to study at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris and Université de Paris II, and to work for various French media outlets such as Canal+, i>Télé, and France Inter until 2012. She directed two documentaries in 1999 (Nucléaire, un si long silence and Quand je suis tombé dans la télévision), and directed two feature-length films with Elzevir Productions and Arte : Femmes sans enfant, femmes suspect in 2014, and Vieux Amoureux in 2015. She is also a member of the 50/50 collective, which defends equality and diversity in cinema and audiovisual media.

She has always described her entry into the world of writing as an accident. While leafing through a magazine, she happened upon an article that described the sordid circumstances of her grandfather’s death, who was assassinated by his lover, his body cut into pieces and transported through France in a suitcase. This not only inspired her to write her first novel, L’Increvable Monsieur Schneck (2006), but also set her on her path towards a style of writing that is obsessed with family secrets, as well as uncovering the Jewish experience during the Second World War. The author of eleven books of fiction and non-fiction, she has received prizes (Madame Figaro and the Society of French Writers), as well as having been short-listed for the Renaudot, Femina, and Interallié prizes. She is also the recipient of scholarships from the Villa Medicis in Rome and the Institut Français, as well as a Stendhal grant which allows French writers to do research and write abroad.

Her latest novel, Lies in Paradise (2023), tells the story of the chic, picture-perfect Swiss summer camp where she spent her holidays as a child, and the grim secret of how it destroyed two of its children.

Her book The Paris Trilogy will be published in the US and UK in May 2024. It is three semi-autobiographical takes on a woman’s life, starting with Seventeen, progressing with Friendship, and then Swimming: A Love Story. Exploring questions of sexuality, bodily autonomy, femininity, friendship and loss, The Paris Trilogy is a moving meditation on a lifelong journey to reclaim the female body, accepting it for all its faults and learning to celebrate its strength.