26 Prix Médicis winners

Vassilis Alexakis is a Greek-French writer and self-translator of numerous novels in Greek, his mother tongue, and French.

Emmanuèle Bernheim was a French writer. She was the daughter of art collector André Bernheim and sculptress Claude de Soria. In 1993 she won the Prix Médicis with her book Sa femme. She wrote the screenplay of feature films Swimming Pool (2003) and 5x2 (2004), both directed by François Ozon. She lived in Paris and also worked for television. In 1998 she wrote Vendredi soir, a novel that was adapted into film by Claire Denis in 2002. She also worked with Michel Houellebecq on a film adaptation of his novel Platform.

Marie-Claire Blais, is a French Canadian writer, novelist, poet, and playwright from the province of Quebec.

Jean-Marie Blas de Roblès is a French writer. He was born in Sidi bel Abbes in Algeria. He has lived and worked in Brazil, Taiwan and Libya. He is best known for his novel Where Tigers Are at Home which won the Prix du roman Fnac, the Grand prix Jean Giono, and the Prix Médicis. It has been translated into English by Mike Mitchell.

Camille Bourniquel was a French poet, novelist and painter.

Sorj Chalandon is a French writer and journalist. From 1973 until 2007 he worked as a journalist on Libération where, among other things, he covered events in Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Afghanistan. In 1988 he received the Albert Londres Prize for his articles on Northern Ireland and the Klaus Barbie trial. Since then he has worked for the satirical-investigative newspaper Le Canard enchaîné. His second novel, Une promesse (2006), won the Prix Médicis. His 2011 novel Return to Killybegs won the Grand Prix du roman de l'Académie française and was shortlisted for the Prix Goncourt.

Hélène Cixous is a professor, French feminist writer, poet, playwright, philosopher, literary critic and rhetorician. Cixous is best known for her article "The Laugh of the Medusa", which established her as one of the early thinkers in post-structural feminism. She founded the first centre of feminist studies at a European university at the Centre universitaire de Vincennes of the University of Paris.

Benoît Duteurtre is a French novelist and essayist. He is also a musical critic, musician, producer and host of a radio show about music. He spends his time between Paris, New York and Normandy.

Dominique Fernandez is a French writer of novels, essays and travel books. Much of his writing explores homosexual experience and creativity. In 1982 he won the Prix Goncourt for his novel about Pier Paolo Pasolini; and in 2007 he was elected a member of the Académie française.

Jacqueline Harpman was a Belgian writer who wrote in French.

Dany Laferrière is a Haitian-Canadian novelist and journalist who writes in French. He was elected to seat 2 of the Académie française on 12 December 2013, and inducted in May 2015.

Bernard-Henri Lévy is a French public intellectual. Often referred to in France simply as BHL, he was one of the leaders of the "Nouveaux Philosophes" movement in 1976. In 2015, The Boston Globe said that he is "perhaps the most prominent intellectual in France today". His opinions, political activism and publications have also been the subject of several controversies over the years.

Mathieu Lindon is a French journalist and writer. He is the youngest son of the publisher Jérôme Lindon, and the first cousin of actor Vincent Lindon. He won the Médicis Prize in 2011.

Andreï Sergueïevitch Makine is a French novelist. He also publishes under the pseudonym Gabriel Osmonde. Makine's novels include Dreams of My Russian Summers (1995) which won two top French awards, the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Médicis. He was elected to seat 5 of the Académie Française on 3 March 2016, succeeding Assia Djebar.

Hubert Mingarelli was a French writer. He was born in Mont-Saint-Martin in Lorraine. After serving in the navy for three years, he settled in the southern city of Grenoble. He won the Prix Medici in 2003 for his novel Quatre Soldats. The English translation of his novel Un repas en hiver by Sam Taylor was nominated for the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize.

Georges Perec was a French novelist, filmmaker, documentalist, and essayist. He was a member of the Oulipo group. His father died as a soldier early in the Second World War and his mother was murdered in the Holocaust, and many of his works deal with absence, loss, and identity, often through word play.

René Victor Pilhes is a French writer and former publicist, born in 1934.

Christiane Rochefort was a French feminist writer. She was born into a left-wing working class Parisian family; her father joined the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War. Rochefort worked as a journalist and spent fifteen years as a press attaché to the Cannes Film Festival before publishing her first novel, Le Repos du guerrier, in 1958. Like several of her later novels, Le Repos du guerrier was a bestseller; in 1962 it was adapted into a popular film directed by Roger Vadim and starring Brigitte Bardot. Her novels are divided between social realist satires set in present-day France and utopian or dystopian fantasies. She won the Prix Médicis in 1988. Rochefort's novels also have strong sexual elements.

Jean Philippe Rolin is a French writer and journalist. He received the Albert Londres Prize for journalism in 1988, and his novel L'organisation received the Medicis award in 1996.

Claude Simon was a French novelist, and the 1985 Nobel Laureate in Literature.

Yves Simon (born 3 May 1944 in Choiseul, Haute-Marne) is a French singer and writer.

Philippe Sollers is a French writer and critic. In 1960 he founded the avant garde literary journal Tel Quel, which was published by Le Seuil and ran until 1982. Sollers then created the journal L'Infini, published first by Denoel, then by Gallimard with Sollers remaining as sole editor.

Jean-Philippe Toussaint is a Belgian novelist, photographer and filmmaker. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and he has had his photographs displayed in Brussels and Japan. Toussaint won the Prix Médicis in 2005 for his novel Fuir, second volume of the « Cycle of Marie », a four-tome chronicle published over ten years and displaying the separation of Marie and her lover. His 2009 novel La Vérité sur Marie, third volume of the cycle, won the Prix Décembre.

Antoine Volodine is the pseudonym of a Russian-French writer. He initially was interested in the original Association des Écrivains et Artistes Révolutionnaires. His works often involve cataclysms and have scenes of interrogations. He won the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire in 1987. Des anges mineurs, one of his best-known works, won the Prix du Livre Inter and Prix Wepler in 2000. He won the Prix Médicis in 2014 for his latest novel, Terminus radieux.

Elie Wiesel was a Romanian-born American writer, professor, political activist, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor. He authored 57 books, written mostly in French and English, including Night, a work based on his experiences as a Jewish prisoner in the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps.

Monique Wittig was a French author, philosopher and feminist theorist who wrote about overcoming socially enforced gender roles and who coined the phrase "heterosexual contract". She published her first novel, L'Opoponax, in 1964. Her second novel, Les Guérillères (1969), was a landmark in lesbian feminism.