Gaël Octavia

Rhapsodie was premiered in 2020 by Abdon Fortuné Koumbha at the Centre Culturel Municipal Jean Gagnant, in Limoges, as part of their autumn theatre festival. In December 2021, her work Une vie familiale was performed in English as Family at Molière in the Park, an outdoor theatre festival held in Prospect Park, a "dream-like" play of a closeted husband and wife, trapped by their need to keep up appearances.

The first of her plays to be staged, Congre et homard, is a story told between a fisherman and the young man working for him, the third character being the fisherman's wife, who never appears. It was premiered in 2010 by the Guadeloupean director Dominik Bernard, as part of the first edition of the Cap Excellence en Théâtre Festival. After a tour of the Caribbean, in Guadeloupe, Haiti, Martinique and Guyana, the play was performed dring the 2011 Avignon Festival, before being published the following year by Lansman, under the Etc Caraibe label. Cette guerre que nous n'avons pas faite, a dialogue between a soldier and his mother, was premiered in 2017 by Luc Clémentin at the Scène nationale de Martinique, Tropiques Atrium, and was performed in Martinique, Guadeloupe, Paris and Reunion. La fin de Mame Baby is a story of four women narrated by Aline, a home care nurse just returned to her neighbourhood, after fleeing it seven years before. It won the prix Wepler in 2017. It has been said that in her two novels, she dismantles the myth of the poto mitan, the woman as pillar of Martinique society, saying herself of the idea: "culpabilise les femmes et dédouane les hommes", that it places a burden of responsibility on women, while exculpating men.

In 2009, her first book, Le Voyage, was published by the New York publisher RivartiCollection.

Cultural organisations working to promote Caribbean theatre recognised Octavia's work early on. In 2003, actor Greg Germain chose her first play, Le Voyage, for a reading in his theatre at the Chapelle du Verbe Incarné in Avignon. The following year, Congre et homard, another play, was selected by the reading committee of Textes en Paroles, an association based in Guadeloupe working to promote contemporary Caribbean theatrical writing. In 2005, Moisson d'avril, a portrait of a power-seeking but conflicted politician, was broadcast on RFO Martinique under the title "Ça y est!". Gaël Octavia's plays have been staged in France, Democratic Republic of the Congo, across the West Indies and in the United States.

After graduating with a degree in engineering, she worked in telecommunications. In 2002, she started writing for Tangente, a popular mathematics magazine. She also became head of communications for Fondation Sciences Mathématiques de Paris.

Gaël Octavia grew up on a council estate in Schœlcher, where she was greatly influenced by her parents. Her mother would tell the story of Octavia's grandmother, who fell in love with a married man. When he died, she was left alone to raise her children, destitute and excluded. This family story captivated Gaël Octavia, who retold it in Ma Parole. After studying at the Lycée Victor-Schœlcher, she obtained her baccalaureate in 1995 and left Martinique to settle in Paris to study. She studied at the lycée Fénelon in Paris and then at a prestigious engineering school.

Gaël Octavia (29 December 1977 in Fort-de-France (Martinique), is a French writer and playwright. She is also a film director and painter.