⚠️ The date shown at the top of this event comes from the official source. The original description mentions other dates that may be outdated.
The Afro-feminist children’s and young adult author guides you through building your imaginary world with guided writing exercises that encourage discussion, reflection and creativity.
Born in Orléans on 21/07/1992 to a Congolese father and a Martinican mother, Laura N’Safou published her first novel at the age of 16. Through her reading, she quickly realized that Black French women in Europe were not represented in French feminist literature. She then created the blog Mrs Roots and decided to dedicate her writing to highlighting the diversity of African and Afro-descendant literature and to Afro-feminism in France. She draws inspiration from Black American novelist Toni Morrison (1931-2019), a Nobel Prize winner in Literature and Afro-feminist activist, whom she would later honor in her novel Ecrire avant l'aube (Albin Michel Jeunesse, 2025). Since 2017, Laura N’Safou has never stopped writing. Writing to fill the void in representation that she wished she could have identified with in the books she read. “Writing so that no one can ever again say: I didn’t know,” she states on her blog. Through the life stories of her characters - such as Adé, a little girl with tightly coiled hair who is mocked by her classmates ( Comme un million de papillons noirs , Cambourakis, 2018), or Elikia, a young woman confronted with an Africa where the sun has disappeared (the Nos jours brûlés trilogy, Albin Michel, 2021), Laura N’Safou sometimes draws on reality, and often on the imagination, to explore racism, self-acceptance, sisterhood, grief and polyamory ( Amours croisées followed by Amours croisées, celles que nous étions , Marabulles, 2022 and 2026, illustrated by Camélia Blandeau), through the lens of Afro-feminism. She also recently contributed to the book Pour la joie, an ode to poetic and political resistance . This activist anthology places joy at the heart of struggle and emancipation. As tools in the fight to increase the visibility of Afro-descendant people in French-language literature and combat stereotypes, writing and the variety of formats Laura N'Safou uses (novels, children’s picture books, audiobooks, graphic novels…) allow her to help fill the immense gap in the French literary landscape and reflect her prolific literary output.
Source: paris.fr — photo: ©Laura N'Safou