Marguerite Abouet

Marguerite Abouet (born 1971, Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire) is an Ivorian-French writer best known for the graphic novel series Aya, illustrated by her husband Clément Oubrerie. Born in the Yopougon district of Abidjan, Abouet moved to Paris at age 12 with her brother to live with their great-uncle, where she completed her education and later worked as a legal assistant while writing her first comics.

Aya de Yopougon, published in France by Gallimard Jeunesse in 2005 and in North America by Drawn & Quarterly in 2007, tells the story of a studious 19-year-old woman navigating life in the Yopougon neighborhood of Abidjan in 1978. The series is drawn from Abouet’s childhood memories and reflects her desire to portray an Africa outside the Western media’s narrow lens — showing everyday life, humor, family, ambition, and community rather than war and famine. The Aya series ran to six volumes and sold over 200,000 copies in France alone. It was subsequently adapted into an animated film co-directed by Abouet.

Abouet won the Angoulême International Comics Festival Prize for First Comic Book in 2006 for Aya and received the Glyph Comics Awards Rising Star Award for Best Self-Publisher in 2008. Her work has been translated into multiple languages. She also created the children’s comics series Akissi, also illustrated by Oubrerie.