Laurence Defranoux was born in Caen and grew up in Normandy. She studied cinema in Paris, before embarking on two years of travel in Asia, backpacking through Turkey, China, Pakistan, India, Vietnam, Iran, Uzbekistan, Syria and other places. After a short career as a photographer and documentary maker, she trained as a journalist and joined the French daily newspaper, "Libération" in 2001 as an editor. In 2014, she became a reporter-editor on Asia. Particularly interested in the issue of Xinjiang, she is the author of "Les Ouïghours, Histoire d'un peuple sacrifié" (384 pp.), published on 8 September 2022 by Éditions Tallandier, in Paris.