The daughter of Spanish refugees who fled Franco's regime, Gonel Lydie Salvayre earned a degree in Modern Literature in Toulouse and later studied Psychiatry in Marseille, practicing medicine for about fifteen years. In the 1980s, she began publishing short stories in literary magazines, leading up to the release of her first novel, La Déclaration, in 1990. The book was hailed by critics as a brilliant debut and awarded the Prix Hermès. In 1997, she published La Compagnie des Spectres, which won the Prix Novembre and was named Book of the Year by Lire magazine. Meanwhile, some of her texts were adapted for the stage by directors such as Yvon Chaix and Laurence Février. In 2009, she wrote Matricule des Anges, a piece commissioned by France Culture and presented at the Avignon Festival alongside the rock band Noir Désir, which later toured successfully in France and abroad. In 2014, Salvayre won the Prix Goncourt for Pas pleurer, a novel that revisits the Spanish Civil War and her family's history, with references to Nobel Prize-winning author Georges Bernanos and his denunciation of Francoism in Les Grands Cimetières sous la lune. Since 2023, her works have been translated into Italian by Prehistorica Editore, which has published the novel La conferenza (2023), a reissue of Non piangere (2024), and the literary essay Sette donne (2025).