Hervé Le Tellier
Hervé Le Tellier (born 21 April 1957) is a French writer and linguist, and a member of the international literary group Oulipo (Ouvroir de Littérature Potentielle, which translates roughly as "workshop of potential literature"). He is its fourth president. Other notable members have included Raymond Queneau, Georges Perec, Italo Calvino, Jacques Roubaud, Jean Lescure and Harry Mathews. He won the 2020 Prix Goncourt for "The Anomaly". Biography. Born in Paris, Le Tellier started his career as a scientific journalist, and joined Oulipo in 1992. As an author, he came to general attention in 1998 with the publication  in France of his book "Les amnésiques n'ont rien vécu d'inoubliable", a collection of one thousand very short sentences all beginning with "Je pense que" (I think that), published in English as "A Thousand Pearls (for a Thousand Pennies)". His rather complex novel "Le voleur de nostalgie" is a tribute to the Italian writer Italo Calvino. He is also one of the participants of "Papous dans la tête", the cult literary quiz of "France Culture", the French cultural radio station. He became in 2002 a daily contributor to the website of the newspaper "Le Monde" with a short satirical chronicle  called "Papier de verre" (glass paper). He founded, with Frederic Pages and others, the "Association of Friends of Jean-Baptiste Botul" to promote this fictitious philosopher and his school of "Botulism". One of his most recent publication is "Esthétique de l’Oulipo" ("The Aesthetics of Oulipo"), a very personal take on literature under constraint, considered from a linguistic perspective. Seven of his books are translated into English, from "Enough about love" (Other Press) to "The Sextine Chapel" (Dalkey Archive).