More than 400 women from the literary world, including Annie Ernaux and Vanessa Springora, denounce “the persistence of sexual assault and rape” in the industry

“Literature has never softened morals.” A collective of more than 400 writers, editors and teacher-researchers, including Nobel Prize winner Annie Ernaux and the author of ConsentVanessa Springora, denounces the persistence of sexual assault and rape within the literary world and studies of letters, in a column published in the newspaper The world, Thursday March 7. These personalities, which also include the feminist researcher Camille Froidevaux-Metterie or Camille Kouchner, who wrote The big familyalso call for the organization of states general for women.

The authors of the column take the conviction as an example “for domestic violence by professor emeritus, specialist in lyricism and poet Jean-Michel Maulpoix” Who “confirms that neither literature nor academia saves women“.

Punches on the stomach during pregnancy or on a cast protecting a broken wrist, hair pulled out… Two information sites, Mediapart and Zone critique, published court reports detailing the facts denounced by the ex-partner of Jean-Michel Maulpoix. The 71-year-old writer, winner of the 2022 Goncourt Poetry Prize, received an 18-month suspended prison sentence in mid-February for assault and battery on his wife, Laure Helms, 46 years old. However, on February 15, two days after the conviction, Gallimard republished two of his collections. Pocket has maintained the publication of its essay Charles Baudelaire, the man of the crowds, on the scheduled date, February 29. Likewise, the collection Night notebook published Thursday by Mercure de France.