Mohammed Arkoun was an Algerian scholar and thinker. He was considered to have been one of the most influential secular scholars in Islamic studies contributing to contemporary intellectual Islamic reform. In a career of more than 30 years, he had been a critic of the tensions embedded in his field of study, advocating Islamic modernism, secularism, and humanism. During his academic career, he wrote his numerous books mostly in French, and occasionally in English and Arabic.
Christophe Honoré is a French writer and film and theatre director.
Abdellatif Laâbi is a Moroccan poet, journalist, novelist, playwright, translator and political activist.
Eric-Emmanuel Schmitt is a Franco-Belgian playwright, short story writer and novelist, as well as a film director. His plays have been staged in over fifty countries all over the world.
Kama Sywor Kamanda(11 November 1952, Congo) is a Congolese French-speaking writer, poet, novelist, playwright, speaker, essayist and storyteller from the Democratic Republic of the Congo. He is also a committed intellectual who contributes to the evolution of ideas and the history of Africa. He was born in Luebo in the province of Kasaï Occidental in Congo-Kinshasa on 11 November 1952. His first publication, Les Contes des veillées africaines was an immediate success. From the beginning of his career, his literary work has stood out due to its originality, its unique style and its themes. As per literary critics: Kamanda owes much of his world renown as a writer to his "Kamanda Tales", as they should be called for their evocative power and literary quality, which rank this African writer among the greatest classic authors such as Andersen, Grimm, Perrault and Maupassant. Kama Sywor Kamanda is considered as the Africa's greatest storyteller.
The Prix mondial Cino Del Duca is an international literary award. With an award amount of €200,000, it is among the richest literary prizes.
Jean Patrick Modiano, generally known as Patrick Modiano, is a French novelist and recipient of the 2014 Nobel Prize in Literature. He is a noted writer of autofiction, the blend of autobiography and historical fiction.
Marcel Dubé was a Canadian playwright. He produced over 300 works for radio, television, and stage. During his career he promoted the preservation and sanctity of the French language in Quebec.
Trịnh Xuân Thuận is a Vietnamese-American astrophysicist.
Alain Mabanckou is a novelist, journalist, poet, and academic, a French citizen born in the Republic of the Congo, he is currently a Professor of Literature at UCLA. He is best known for his novels and non-fiction writing depicting the experience of contemporary Africa and the African diaspora in France, including Broken Glass (2005) and the Prix Renaudot-winning Memoirs of a Porcupine (2006). He is among the best known and most successful writers in the French language, and one of the best known African writers in France. In some circles in Paris he is known as "the Samuel Beckett of Africa".
Gaël Aymon is an author, screenwriter, film director and producer born in Paris, France.
Léonora Miano is a Cameroonian author.
Vlado Goreski – Rafik is a Macedonian-Slovenian graphic artist and scenographer.
The Angoulême International Comics Festival is the second largest comics festival in Europe after the Lucca Comics & Games in Italy, and the third biggest in the world after Lucca Comics & Games and the Comiket of Japan. It has occurred every year since 1974 in Angoulême, France, on the last week end of January.
Patricia Reznikov is a Franco-American writer.
Michèle Kahn is a French writer who later lived in Strasbourg and currently in Paris. She first wrote books for the young, and mainly addressed the adult public from 1997. Her novels, strongly anchored in history and very documented, often inspired by the adventures of the Jewish people, draw readers around the world.
Mona Ozouf is a French historian and philosopher. Born into a family of schoolteachers keen on preserving the language and the culture of Brittany, she graduated as a teacher of philosophy from the École normale supérieure de jeunes filles. After teaching philosophy, she joined the CNRS as a historian. Her research and writings centre on the French Revolution and the French secular education system. Notable publications include L'École, l'Église et la République, 1871–1914 (1963) and La fête révolutionnaire, 1789–1799 (1976), the latter of which was published in English as Festivals and the French Revolution (1988).
Beatrice Alemagna is an Italian illustrator and author.
Jean-Pierre Makouta-Mboukou was a Congolese politician, academic, novelist and playwright. For his abundant and eclectic work his biographers have called him the “Congolese Victor Hugo” and the “baobab of Congolese literature”.
Lisa Mandel is a French bande dessinée comic book author. With Jul Maroh, Mandel co-founded the Collective of female comics creators against sexism (2015). In 2021, Mandel launched the Exemplaire publishing house, with the subtitle, La maison qui édite autrement.
