Alexandra Lapierre is a best-selling French novelist, biographer and short story writer. Educated at the Sorbonne and in the US, she has been awarded some of France’s highest literary honours and earned recognition from readers and critics worldwide.

Her writing is driven by a desire to bring captivating figures and overlooked moments of history to vivid life. Her biography Fanny Stevenson (about the life of Robert Louis Stevenson’s wife) won the Grand Prix des Lectrices de ELLE and her historical novel Artemisia (about the Baroque painter Artemisia Gentileschi) became an international bestseller.

Her most recent work, The Very Secretive and Passionate Stella Miles Franklin, focuses on rural Australia’s bold young woman who battled misogyny in the literary world.

Caroline Barron (Te Uri O Hau, Pākehā) meets her.

Supported by the Embassy of France.