Patrick Autréaux
Patrick Autréaux is a French writer who has held appointments as a writer-in-residence at Boston University and a visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After training in medicine and anthropology, he practiced as an emergency-room psychiatrist in Paris and started writing poetry and contemporary art reviews before publishing fiction. He is affiliated with .
An early experience with cancer led him to write three books on the topic of illness: Dans la vallée des larmes, Soigner et Se survivre. Dans la vallée des larmes relates the experience of a thirty-five year old doctor coming to terms with a lymphoma whose diagnosis had been suddenly announced. Soigner is about a patient in remission who resumes his previous role of doctor and cares for his dying grandfather. Se survivre consists of seven meditations on the state of illness.
Since these early writings, his work has developed in new directions: a hidden family drama that unravels during the expulsion of an undocumented person in France, the agitation of a tree shaken by a storm as a metaphor for the loss of a loved one and a narrative retracing Autréaux's personal journey between medicine and literature.
Les Irréguliers was born out of the experience the author had when seeking news of a detained undocumented friend. Le grand vivant labels itself a “standing poem” which brings to life the dying moments of a beloved grandfather, who until his last breath, had sheltered the presence of his deceased wife and was in the eyes of his grandson, a protective figure.” Le grand vivant was performed in 2015 the French Avignon theater festival. Lastly, La Voix écrite is an autobiographical tale on the long road to writing. This tale speak particularly of the relationship between the author and his former editor “Max” behind whom we decipher “the protective figure of J.-B. Pontalis”, psychoanalyst and editor at Gallimard.
About his novel Quand la parole attend la nuit, the French literary journal AOC noted, “The learning in question here is much broader than that of becoming a practitioner. The art of medicine for Patrick Autréaux is the art of being in the world or, to use one of his terms, of being in the ‘cosmos'.’” His book Pussyboy is "a strong, disturbing, and daring story without ever being raw, radical in everything it reveals", and according to Diacritik "one of the most important books in recent years" that also signals a new inflection in his work.
Patrick Autréaux announced in 2023 the opening of a cycle, titled Constat, with the release of The Saint of the Family. Liberation described it as “a text on faith written by an atheist and whose engine is ‘care’ in the strong sense of the term: a concern, a generous responsibility as much as a therapeutic intervention.” The French literary journal Zone Critique added, “The saint of the family is none other than Thérèse de Lisieux, in short Sainte Thérèse... Here, she almost makes herself an imaginary friend of the child in the story... No family inquiry, no hidden motives, or aggressive vindictiveness, but the observation of a reality that was and its progressive surfacing under the watchful reader’s eyes. If the text deploys an attempt to unmask, it is not to reveal any mystery therefore, but to consider the other side of the coin, the flip side of history.” AOC further calls it “a journey along which illusions fall away, the inessential fades away and the meaning of things becomes clearer.”
The book titled L’Époux continues the cycle inaugurated by The Saint of the Family. It opens on a wedding but like all of Autréaux's works, "each event is the start of a journey." This journey allows Autréaux to explore two key tensions: first, "the jewish parents of his spouse who have a hard time accepting their son's homosexuality, and even more so with their future son-in-laws," and, second, "catholicism's rejection of homosexulaity."
Patrick Autréaux's work has also been published in numerous journals. His poetry has appeared, amongst other outlets, in Phréatique, Poésie 91, Van, MuseMedusa, Sarrazine, Noto, REVU, Margelles, and Catastrophes.
In 2022, he was a Fellow at ; and in 2023, writer-in-residence at the Internationale House of Literature in Brussels.
Political positions :
In 2016, Autréaux published with the Diderot Institute a polemical take on the terrorist attack, “Je suis Charlie, un an après”, written for a round table at Harvard University and Boston University. And in 2019, Politis published an open letter to his representative LREM about the Yellow Vest Protests: "Congresswoman, why I don't believe you"
List of Works
Works of fiction
Dans la vallée des larmes Gallimard, 2009.Soigner, Gallimard, 2010.Le Dedans des choses, Gallimard, 2012.Se survivre, Éditions Verdier, 2013.Les Irréguliers, Gallimard, 2015.Le Grand vivant, Éditions Verdier, 2016.La Voix écrite, Éditions Verdier, 2017.Dans la vallée des larmes et Soigner, Gallimard, Folio, 2017.- Quand la parole attend la nuit '', Éditions Verdier, 2019
- Pussyboy, Éditions Verdier, 2021
- L'instant du toujours, Éditions du Chemin de fer, 2022
- La Sainte de la famille, Éditions Verdier, 2023
- L’Époux'', Gallimard, 2025
Translations
', tr. Eduardo A. Febles, UIT Books, USA, 2019- '
Essays and articles
Portrait d’un poète vietnamien : Hoàng Câm, Carnets du Vietnam, No. 12, 2006Thérèse de Lisieux, La confiance et l'abandon, présentation et choix de textes, Éditions du Seuil, 2008', Libres Cahiers pour la psychanalyse, L’amour de transfert, No. 23, 2011Se survivre, La Nouvelle Revue Française, Moi & Je, No. 598, 2011- '
Writings on art
madé ou l’Art de la synecdoque, 2005L’Ithaque d’André Le Bozec, 2005Un homme heureux. Portrait d’un collectionneur, in catalogue de la donation Le Bozec, 2007Parole à voir : dialogues en noir blanc gris, 20O9Sous-bois, huiles de L. B. Spadavecchia, 2010- Alix Le Méléder, 2010
- Vrai corps, œuvres sur papier de Bertrand Lagadec,, 2010Guy de Lussigny ou L’Art des arlequinades décomposées, 2010Les deux éternités, ardoises de Nicolas Kennett, in "Escaut : rives, dérives", 2011… du printemps de Thierry Thieû Niang, Éditions du Musée d'Art contemporain du Val-de-Marne|Mac/Val, 2013
- Texte et entretien in Alix Le Méléder - Traces, peintures, Éditions Tituli, 2016
- Still life selon TM, préface à Qu'en moi Tokyo s'anonyme de Thibault Marthouret, Éditions Abordo, 2018
- , in Eve Gramatzki, une histoire critique, 1972–2022, Éditions Méridianes, 2022
Interviews
- Diacritik : "Retour sur vingt années d'écriture," June 23, 2025
- Diacritik : Interview on L’Époux, June 6, 2025
- Fier.es et Queer, 27 avril 2025
- Colegio de Mexico, Sept. 10 2024
- , Sept. 6 2024
- Zone critique : ""
- , France 2, March 12, 2023
- , February 7, 2023, March 4, 2021
- , WBUR, July 5, 2020
- , October 1, 2019
- , September 16, 2019
- , WBUR, June 10, 2018
- , April 1, 2018
- , March 17, 2017
- , January 13, 2017
- , February 17, 2016
- , Septembre 29 2015
- , April 4, 2013
- , April 7, 2012
- , February 27, 2012
- , September 2009
Awards and distinctions
- Laureate of the Villa Marguerite-Yourcenar 2011
- Amic Prize Winner, Prix de l'Académie française 2012
- Laureate of the Paris-Québec Fellowship 2012
- Writing Residency Winner, Fondation des Treilles 2015
- 2016
- Hemingway Grants for translation 2018
- Writer-in-residence at Boston University 2018–2019
- 2022
- Writer-in-Residence at
- Writer-in-residence at Boston University 2024