Gaëlle Bélem

Gaëlle Bélem (born 1984) is a French writer of Réunionese extraction known for the prize-winning coming-of-age novel Un monstre est là, derrière la porte (2020), and the historical novel Le fruit le plus rare : ou la vie d'Edmond Albius (2023).

Biography
Gaëlle Bélem was born in Saint-Benoît, Réunion, grew up in a modest family and has been writing since the age of twelve. She left Réunion at the age of 17, and studied in Toulouse, France, at the Lycée Pierre-de-Fermat from 2002 to 2005, and subsequently at Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University in 2005 and finally at École Pratique des Hautes Études. In 2009 she started as a teacher of history and geography in Île-de-France. Back in Réunion, she continued to work as a teacher of Latin, history and geography, first in middle school and later in high school. She also taught in a detention center and functions as an associate judge in a juvenile court.

In 2020 she published her first novel Un monstre est là, derrière la porte (translated title: A Monster is There, Behind the Door). The novel was awarded the 2020 Grand prix du roman métis as well as the André-Dubreuil prize of the Société des gens de lettres for a first novel and was among the finalists for the Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie that year. Not an autobiographical novel, it relates with humor the story of a young girl growing up in a poor and dysfunctional family in Saint-Benoît.

In 2023, Bélem published her second novel Le fruit le plus rare ou la vie d'Edmond Albius (translated title: The Rarest Fruit, or the Life of Edmond Albius), both a fictionalized historical biography of horticulturist Edmond Albius and an adventure novel. Albius's novel technique revolutionized the cultivation of vanilla by making it possible to profitably grow Vanilla planifolia beyond its native habitat in Latin America.

Awards

 * Grand prix du roman métis 2020 and debut novel Prix André Dubreuil du premier roman 2020 of the Société des gens de lettres for Un monstre est là, derrière la porte.