A former record shop assistant, an occasional worker at a peep show and an ex-prostitute, Virginie Despentes wrote the book on which the controversial and censored film Baise-moi (1998) was based, and is author of the novels Leschiennes sauvantes (1998) and Les Jolieschoses (2001) as well as the non-fiction book King Kong Theory (2007) and others. Although Baise-moi was initially rejected by a number of editorials, it was finally released by Éditions Florent-Massot. Despentes has become one of the outstanding representatives of a new generation of daring young French writers, selling in France more than 50,000 copies of her latest book King Kong Theory (2006). In 2002 she co-directed the film adaptation of Baise-moi.