Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse (born 1979, in Butare) is a French-Rwandan writer and a survivor of the Rwandan genocide. She is the author of three books, and several collections of short stories and poetry. Her writing has received a number of literary prizes in France and abroad.

Biography Early life Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse was born and raised in Butare, Rwanda. Her father was Polish and her mother is Rwandan. As a child, she attended an international school in Butare, where she learned to speak French fluently. During the 1994 genocide, 15-year-old Beata saved herself and her Tutsi mother from armed Hutu militiaman by pretending to be French. The pair fled the country by hiding in a Terre des hommes children's convoy. Umubyeyi Mairesse would later be placed with a foster family in the north of France. After high school, she studied literature and political science at the Sorbonne University, where she graduated with a degree in humanitarian action and development. She then worked for international aid organisations and in the health sector. Since 2007 she has lived in Bordeaux, France.

Writing career

In 2015, Umubyeyi Mairesse made her debut as a writer with a collection of short stories called Ejo, a word that means both 'yesterday' and 'tomorrow' in Kinyarwanda, her mother-tongue. The stories are set before and after the genocide and are told from the perspective of women. In 2017, she published a second collection of short stories, Lézardes.

In 2019, she released Après le progrès, a collection of poems. That year, Umubyeyi Mairesse published her debut novel, Tous tes enfants dispersés. The novel tells the story of a family torn apart by genocide and exile. It deals with themes such as motherhood, the role of women as bearers of culture, the transmission of tradition and culture between generations, racism and cultural identity. and awarded several literary prizes, including the 2020 Prix des cinq continents de la francophonie. and The Guardian.

Umubyeyi Mairesse published her second novel, Consolée, in 2022. Consolée tells the story of a mixed-race woman who was taken from her Rwandan mother as a child to be raised by white nuns then sent for adoption in Belgium. The story is based on true events of mixed-race children raised at the Institut pour enfants mulâtres de Save during Belgian colonial rule. The novel was awarded the Prix Kourouma at the 2023 Geneva Book Fair.

In 2024, Umubyeyi Mairesse published the autobiographical Le convoi, which depicted her escape from Rwanda during the 1994 genocide. In the book, she recounts how she tracked down the children from the convoy she fled with, the BBC team which filmed the convoy, and the aid workers who saved her life. She mixes autobiography and essay, linking her work with other writers who survived genocides, such as Primo Levi and Imre Kertész. Le convoi received praise from by French critics, and was named one of the best books of 2024 by Télérama and Les Inrockuptibles. The book went on to win a number of prominent literary awards, including the Prix Essai France Télévisions and the Grand prix de l'héroïne Madame Figaro. It was also finalist for the Prix du Livre Inter 2024.

In the same year, her poetry collection Culbuter le malheur was published by the French-Canadian publisher Mémoire d'encrier.

Beata Umubyeyi Mairesse gave the opening speech at the 24th Berlin International Literature Festival 2024.