Maylis de Kerangal
Maylis de Kerangal (born 16 June 1967) is a French author. Life and career. Raised in Le Havre, Maylis de Kerangal went on to study history and philosophy in Rouen and Paris. She worked at Paris-based Éditions Gallimard (children and youth department, from 1991 to 1996), then travelled in the United States, and went back to studies at the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences. She wrote her first novel in 2000, and from that moment on became a full-time writer. Her celebrated novel, "Birth of a Bridge", ("Naissance d'un pont", 2010) presents  a literary saga of a handful of men and women who are charged with building a bridge somewhere in a mythical California. "Birth of a Bridge" was short-listed for the Prix Goncourt, and awarded both the Prix Médicis in 2010 and the Premio Gregor von Rezzori in 2014 and has been translated into several languages worldwide. "Mend the Living" ("Réparer les vivants", 2014), published in the UK, has also won several prizes including the Prix Orange du Livre and the Grand prix RTL du livre in France, and the 2017 Wellcome Book Prize (UK). "Mend the Living" was adapted  for the stage at the theatre festival in Avignon, receiving rave reviews for its intimate look at the realities and philosophical questioning around organ donation. It was adapted into the film "Heal the Living" in 2016. A second English-language translation of the novel, entitled "The Heart", was published in the US in 2017.