Virginie Lydie's school is primarily that of life. Starting from the principle that domestic accidents are one of the leading causes of mortality in France, she feels just as comfortable exploring the outdoors.Graduated in marketing and communication, having spent over 15 years with advertisers and ...
Virginie Lydie’s school is primarily that of life. Starting from the principle that domestic accidents are one of the leading causes of mortality in France, she feels just as comfortable exploring the outdoors.
Graduated in marketing and communication, having spent over 15 years with advertisers and in agencies, she enrolled in the international certificate in human ecology in 2007. She appreciates this transdisciplinary approach that addresses the relationships between humans and their environment in a broad sense (physical, economic, sociocultural…). She opts for independence and embarks on writing. In the meantime, an event occurred: born under X, she found her biological mother.
The themes of identity and exile resonate with her. Her essay Traversée interdite, dedicated to the harragas (border crossers), received very positive reviews. She was invited to discuss it at the “Lundis de Mediapart” in March 2011, on the set of TV5 Monde, in the studios of France Culture. In the book, Ma vie de clandestin en France, she gives a voice to Mehdi Sayed, 17 years old in the underground France, having followed him for more than three years in courts, in prison, in detention, in the hospital, in Tunisia where he was expelled…
In Youth literature, she does not hesitate to tackle subjects deemed “difficult.” A short novel, 24 heures dans la vie de Théo, addresses drug addiction with tact and realism: prevention starts before it’s too late! In her documentary on youth suicide, Mourir pour exister, she allows suicidal adolescents and their parents to express themselves, attempting to break taboos and preconceived ideas.
In a completely different field, creating texts for a GPS hiking audioguide intended for the visually impaired made her realize that she “saw without seeing.” Since then, she has written the content for about thirty GPS hiking guides. The constraints of this medium are for her an exciting challenge, as the short formats of the texts must not sacrifice creativity or the quality of information.