Joëlle Écormier

Joëlle Écormier (born March 31, 1967, in Le Tampon, Réunion), is a French writer.

After writing for herself during her childhood, she was a homemaker when she participated in a literary experiment launched by the book club France Loisirs in 1998: the collaborative writing of a novel whose first pages were endorsed by Yann Queffélec, and whose later pages were to be chosen from international submissions. The selection of her submission for the second chapter of this collaborative work of fiction, which appeared in 1999 under the title 30 jours à tuer ("Thirty Days to Kill") led the young woman to launch herself into a career as a writer.

Écormier's first independent novel, Le Grand Tamarinier ("The Big Tamarind Tree"), was published by the Réunion publishing house Azalées Éditions in 2000. Le Grand Tamarinier created a child and began a shift towards children's literature, which she pursued with her second work, a tale illustrated by her daughter's drawings. In fact, after 2003 and the appearance of her second novel, Plus léger que l'air ("Lighter Than Air"), Joëlle Écormier, switching to Océan Éditions ("Ocean Editions"), dedicated herself to works for very small children. She attempted to modernize children by avoiding motifs from Réunion cultural folklore. Only in 2009 did she return to books without illustrations by publishing a collection of short stories for adolescents, Je t'écris du pont ("I write to you about the bridge"), and, above all, her third novel, Le Petit Désordre de la mer ("The Little Disorder of the Sea"). Le Petit Désordre de la mer won an award the same year at the Book and Comic Festival in Saint-Denis, Réunion.

Biography

Youth and path before publishing Joëlle Écormier was born in 1967 in Le Tampon, a township located in the southern part of the island Réunion, a French overseas department in the southwestern Indian Ocean. Since the time she was very young, she wrote texts for herself, which she did not publish. She passed a literary baccalaureate (equivalent to a high school diploma) during the time of her schooling. But Queffélec, inspired by a recent event in the United States, imagined the story of Clara Turner, a young American who, condemned to death for having killed her viola professor, is granted by the State governor a 30-day sentence. What she will do with these thirty days must be the subject of the novel, whose first chapter is published on the France Loisirs website. Convinced, the jury adopted Écormier's text, which from then on became the official version from which the Internet users must create, proposing a third chapter. After her, the jury holds onto the proposal from Marceline Breton, editor and free-lance designer working in Hanover, as well as those of Patrice Sickerson, technical head at French Télécom living in metropolitan Verrières-le-Buisson; Christophe Tissier, website creator living in Antony; Louis-Olivier Dupin, a local of Grenoble working as a supervisory staff agent in a transportation company; and finally, Christophe Sancy, publicist in Tervuren, Belgium. Trente jours à tuer, termed the "first novel created on the internet," appeared in 1999 The circulation is guaranteed, exclusively, by France Loisirs. the first novel written by Joëlle Écormier only appeared in 2000 in the Azalea Publishers, a Réunion publishing house. Entitled "Le Grand Tamarinier" (The Grand Tamarind), it is about the history of a small boy called Louis who, beaten by his alcoholic father, finds the strength to rebel in order to embark upon a trip to the borders of the imaginary. Lending to the story, and readable by all the public, In the meantime, he encounters numerous animals of Réunion bestiary: among others, a turtle, a chameleon, a papangue, a rat, a dolphin or a Phaethon that teaches him to fly. Additionally, the story that takes place in Réunion, and told by an old sunflower, is about the adventures of a little, pure flower that is trying to find how to make the sun, who decided one morning to no longer get up, leave his bed. The work is only distributed by direct sales on the island of Réunion. In fact, the author felt obliged to write the end in Réunion creole to be able to publish it.

The second novel by Écormier appeared in 2003, the year after which she was put in charge of promoting writing at the library in Saint-Denis, the François-Mitterrand House of Communication. This lead her to facilitate writing workshops in the academic realm. The work is part of a few rare titles of Reunion literature cited under the corresponding section of English tour guide books that Lonely Planet sanctions, in Maurice and in Seychelles in 2004 and 2007. It benefited from the participation of Andy Le Sauce, a freediver author with numerous world records who has lived on the island for many years.

Inauguration of a children's collection An admirer of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's Petit Prince (The Little Prince), Joëlle Écormier entered a three-year period beginning in 2006 in which she published fifteen works of children's literature. Shifting to another Réunion publisher, Océan Éditions, she first put forward N'oublie pas que je m'appelle Octavie ("Don't forget that my name is Octavie"). The album, illustrated by Modeste Madoré and addressed to children of age six and up, tells the story of a pair of octopuses, Octavie and Octébo, who have conflicting dreams: Octavie hopes to get his octopus doctorate, but Octébo just wants to start a big family.

The same year, in the same collection and targeting the same age range, Joëlle Écormier also came out with Le Pays Dézétoiles (A word play on "The Country of the Stars"), illustrated by Laure Seabra, and then Mais que fait grand-mère Kalle?, illustrated by Nathalie Millet. Le Pays Dézétoiles describes a little star, Tizétoile, who does not know how to shine like the others. Tizétoile is called a "zétoile," making a play-off the word for star, "étoile." Mais que fait grand-mère Kalle? describes a classic Réunion character, the witch Grandmother Kalle. intending to help young readers of age three and up explore her daily life near the volcano Piton de la Fournaise. In fact, these three titles form the first three children's books published by Océan Éditions, inaugurating her collection Ocean Youth.

The author again picked up the premise of Mais que fait grand-mère Kalle? in 2008 with two more works, one on the daily life of La Buse, famous historical pirate of Réunion and the Indian Ocean ,, and the other on the daily life of the dodo, this bird endemic to Mauritius and extinct in the real world. According to the publisher, "In this series, the author enjoys unveiling the hidden face of legends or famous characters from here and elsewhere." In doing so, according to Joëlle Écormier herself, she endeavors to avoid motifs from Réunion folklore and its children's literature by doing away with what she considers the typical character, the little tenrec living on its volcano.