Clélia Renucci

Clélia Renucci is a 33-year-old French literature teacher. She relocated to New York 2 years ago and she now devotes her time to writing.

In 2015, she published with Albin Michel a non-fiction essay, Libres d’aimer about the greatest love stories between older women and younger men in European novels. She had this idea while working on her PhD about Balzac’s Comédie Humaine.

Concours pour le Paradis is her debut novel, published in France with Albin Michel.

In the remarkable setting of Venetian Renaissance, Paradise, the largest painting ever made on canvas, becomes a personified character, opposing the minds of Veronese, Tintoretto and the greatest masters of the city. Interweaving artistic rivalries, family betrayals and political turmoil, Clelia Renucci revives the miracle of creation, its spirals and its tragedies.

Her novel, Concours pour le Paradis, received the Prix du Premier Roman (French “First Novel Prize”, created in 1977) and the Prix Grands Destins du Parisien Week-end.