In 2022, French writer Annie Ernaux won the Nobel Prize in Literature. Her work examines class, shame, abortion, sexuality, ageing, family, memory, and the social construction of the self. Her spare autobiographical method turned ordinary and often silenced female experience into collective history.

Ernaux's recognition affirmed literature built from working-class memory, women's bodies, and unsentimental self-scrutiny. Though best known for prose, her compressed style and documentary lyricism influenced poets exploring autobiography, social class, and the politics of intimate truth.