Clarisse Gorokhoff

About

I have always been interested in what human beings make of their lives.

In what they tell of them, what they leave unsaid, what they wish they had lived otherwise.

That is probably why I write.

Clarisse Gorokhoff at a table in a courtyard, a stone bust and cards spread out in front of her

Beginnings

I was born in Paris in 1989. When I was six, I saw my mother die before my eyes. The adults had no more answers than I did to the questions that followed. What stayed with me was a stubborn curiosity about life, about death, and about everything they hold.

I studied philosophy at the Sorbonne, lived for several years in Istanbul, where I began writing novels, then between France and New York, before settling in Arles.

I don’t believe we are entirely the authors of our lives.

There is what happens to us, what slips beyond our grasp, what we inherit without knowing it. What remains, perhaps, is a margin: the way we pass through it all. Literature has taught me to look at people without rushing to explain them.

Writing

I have published six books, with Gallimard, Robert Laffont, Les Équateurs and Actes Sud among others. The most recent, Femmes tout au bord, came out in 2026. In it I write about the lives we might have led and the ones we lead in spite of ourselves. Dreams, philosophy and spiritual traditions keep me company: so many of the ways humans have found to make sense of being in the world.

Cover of Femmes tout au bordCover of Les FillettesCover of De la bombeCover of Casse-gueuleCover of Défaire l’amour

Gathering

I also founded Les Inavouables, writing evenings devoted to the feelings we would rather hide: jealousy, resentment, contempt. Since spring 2026 they have brought together more than 200 people, from Arles to Paris.

An open-air gathering on a square in Arles: people around a table, sheets of paper in front of them

Today

Alongside my writing, I hold one-to-one conversations with people going through a time of doubt, rupture or change, and with those who simply feel the desire to question their existence. These conversations may take the paths of literature, philosophy or writing. I give particular room to the question of death, and devote a separate series of conversations to it.

I live in Arles, where I write and welcome people. The books, the gatherings and the conversations I hold there all spring from the same curiosity: to understand what we make of our lives, and what our lives make of us.

Further