Brigitte Giraud

Brigitte Giraud (French pronunciation: [bʁiʒit ʒiʁo]; born 1960, Sidi-Bel-Abbès in Algeria) is a French writer, author of novels and short stories. She was awarded the 2022 Prix Goncourt for her autobiographical novel Vivre vite (English: Live Fast).

Born in 1960, Brigitte Giraud grew up in Rillieux-la-Pape, France, before settling in nearby Lyon. She has studied English, German and Arabic.

Giraud has worked as a bookseller, translator and journalist. For her first book, La chambre des parents (1997), she received the Prix Littéraire des Étudiants and for Nico, her second novel, the Prix Lettres frontière Rhône-Alpes. In 2001, she received a special mention for the Wepler Prize for À présent. She won the Goncourt short story prize in 2007 for her collection L'amour est très surestimé (English: Love Is Very Overrated), then the Grand Prix Jean Giono for Une année étrangère (English: A Year Abroad) in 2009.

On 3 November 2022, she was awarded the 2022 Prix Goncourt for Vivre vite, a récit about the death of her husband, Claude, in a motorbike crash in 1999 at the age of 41. She is the thirteenth woman to receive the Goncourt since the prize's establishment in 1903. Giraud won after the jury underwent fourteen rounds of voting, the maximum amount permitted. The final vote ended in a stalemate and, in accordance with the rules, the president of the Goncourt Academy cast a deciding vote, selecting Giraud's novel over Giuliano da Empoli's The Wizard of the Kremlin (Le mage du Kremlin).

Giraud lives in Lyon. Her husband, Claude, died in a motorbike accident in 1999.