Anne Berest

Anne Berest is a novelist and screenwriter. She is the daughter of linguist Lélia Picabia and Pierre Berest. She is the great-granddaughter of Francis Picabia and Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia. After preparatory classes at the Lycée Fénelon, she supported a thesis of theatrical studies under the direction of Georges Forestier, in baroque dramaturgy. In 2001, she created at the Théâtre du Rond-point the theatrical review Les Carnets du Rond-Point, which she edited for five years. In 2006, she founded Porte-plume, an editorial structure specializing in memory books. She wrote many biographies including that of Abdelkader Belkhodja the grandfather of the director Maïwenn Lebesco. In 2010, she adapted for Edouard Baer the novel A Pedigree by Patrick Modiano, which was performed at the Atelier theatre. In 2010, she published at Seuil La Fille de son père and in 2012, Les Patriarches, by Grasset, a second filial novel on the end of utopias.

From January to April 2011, she wrote a column on Paris in the Journal du dimanche, including an article on Le Téléphone, the artwork of Sophie Calle.

In 2014, Françoise Sagan’s son, Denis Whesthoff, commissioned her to write a book about her mother, Sagan 1954 to mark the sixty years since the publication of Bonjour Tristesse. 

In 2017, she published with her sister, the writer Claire Berest, a four-handed biography entitled Gabriële, whose heroine is Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia, the wife of the painter Francis Picabia, and partner of the artist Marcel Duchamp. In this book, the Berest sisters rehabilitate the intellectual role of Gabrièle Buffet-Picabia in art history, highlighting her contribution in the thought of abstraction in pictorial matter.