A 48-year-old high-school biology teacher from France, Alexis Jenni, won the country’s top literary prize this year, the Prix Goncourt. … In the Alexis Jenni school of thought, a writer may be someone, anyone, with a compulsion to scrawl or the conviction of having something to say. A writer is not defined by his career, but the simple act of writing regularly. And authors who found success through the muck of making ends meet have taken that approach for some time now, in practice at least.

—Betsy Morais