Clémentine Mélois

Clémentine Mélois (born 15 June 1980) is a French artist and writer, known for her experimental and humorous works that combine visual art and literature. Mélois first gained attention with Cent titres, a book of playful reinterpretations of the titles and covers of well-known books. Her subsequent works include the "found" novel Sinon j'oublie (2017), translated as Otherwise I Forget (2023), and Dehors, la tempête (2020), a non-fiction reflection on reading. In 2024 she published Alors c'est bien, a memoir about the death of her father which received several literary awards. Mélois was a member of the Oulipo experimental literary group between 2017 and 2026.

Biography Mélois was born on 15 June 1980 in La Ferté-Milon, France. Her mother was a teacher and photographer, and her father was sculptor . She has said that a defining moment in her childhood was winning a writing competition organised by Gallimard and receiving a prize of 365 books. She went to college in Villers-Cotterêts and later studied at the Beaux-Arts de Paris, She has said she is inspired by writers such as Raymond Queneau and Georges Perec. From 2015 to 2018, she appeared on the radio programme hosted by France Culture.

Mélois left Oulipo in May 2026, citing the group's difficulty integrating women as one of the reasons for her departure. As Oulipo's rules do not permit leaving the group except in the case of death, Mélois staged a pretend suicide at a café in Paris to announce her departure.

Literary works Mélois's first book, Cent titres, was published in 2014, with a foreword by Jacques Roubaud. In this work she playfully reinterprets the titles and covers of well-known classic novels in French. The title translates into English as "a hundred titles", but is also a pun on sans titre (untitled). A review for France Info noted the way she used innocuous everyday objects to create literary art, and praised the work's lightheartedness and humour.

Dehors, la tempête, published in 2020, is a non-fiction work about Mélois's love of reading. A review in The French Review praised the entertaining and light nature of the work. Études noted her sense of humour and the way the book combined her love of literature with questions about the nature of people, contemporary beliefs and language. It received the in 2024, and the and the in 2025. A review in Le Monde described it as a tribute to life, told in a tender and sensitive way. Fabienne Pascaud, writing for Télérama, gave the work a four-star rating, and notes that Mélois also manages to include the voice of her father, by incorporating his own diary and notebooks into the text.

Mélois writes children's books which are illustrated by her partner , including the Les Chiens pirates and Jean-Loup fait ses trucs series and Radio Banane. Le roman-photo (Le Lombard, 2018), a graphic novel; drawings and colours by Mélois and text by Jan Baetens Dehors, la tempête (Grasset, 2020) Bon pour un jour de légèreté (Grasset, 2020) Alors c'est bien (Gallimard, 2024)