About me | Frédéric Boilet

Frédéric Boilet was born in 1960 at Épinal which lies on the Moselle River in Eastern France.

His debut in comic art was in 1983 with la Nuit des Archées. He published le Rayon vert in 1987 followed by 36 15 Alexia in 1990, two albums where he experimented with a method of working that is still uniquely his today in which he resorts almost exclusively to photographs and video. His encounter with Benoît Peeters turned his work toward semi-autobiographical stories tinged with humour : Love Hotel (1993), Tôkyô est mon jardin (Tôkyô is my Garden, 1997, English version by Fanfare/Ponent Mon in 2007) and Demi-tour (1997).

Winner of the Kôdansha first yearly Morning Manga Fellowship, Frédéric Boilet left for Japan in 1993. He started doing work for manga magazines in the late nineties, and is a rare example of a western comic artist finding success in the Japanese market. In 2001, he organized the Nouvelle Manga Event in Tôkyô and published l'Épinard de Yukiko (Yukiko's Spinach, English version by Fanfare/Ponent Mon in 2003), a book which has now been translated into nine languages. Created together with the manga artist Kan Takahama, Mariko Parade was published in 2003 in both Japan and in France (English version by Fanfare/Ponent Mon in 2004).

Over the years, Frédéric Boilet has played an ever more active role in both European and Japanese comics, adapting Jirô Taniguchi's A Distant Neighborhood and Yoshiharu Tsuge's Munô no hito (Nowhere Man) into French, as well as Joann Sfar's Little Vampire and David B's Epileptic into Japanese. In 2005, he conceived and ran the Japan as Viewed by 17 Creators anthology (English version by Fanfare/Ponent Mon in 2006). Now translated into eight languages, the book received the Special Award from Japan Cartoonists Association. In 2006, he completed l'Apprenti Japonais, a book that gathers together 12 years of texts, drawings and photographs about his time in Japan. Elles, a complete collection of his erotic color short stories which had appeared in Japanese and French magazines, was published in Brazil in 2006, then in France and in Spain.

Back in France since late 2008, Frédéric Boilet now lives discreetly in the Vosges region in Eastern France. Vivi des Vosges, a children's book co-written in collaboration with Aurélia Aurita, was released in France in September 2011. His latest book, 286 jours (286 Days), a photographic story created together with the young Spanish artist Laia Canada, was published in France in January 2014 by Les Impressions Nouvelles.