Joëlle Wintrebert

Joëlle Wintrebert is a French writer. She primarily writes science fiction, but also writes children's literature and journalism. She has won the Prix Rosny-Aîné three times, first in 1980. She also edited the anthology series Univers.

Biography Joëlle Wintrebert graduated in cinema from Paris VIII in 1971, and in literature from the same university in 1972.

She first worked in the audio-visual industry, handling tasks usually forgotten in the credits in television scripts, notably for Arpad, the Gypsy (1973–1974), Spartakus and the Sun Beneath the Sea and (1985–1987). She wrote reviews and columns for a number of magazines, including Fiction, L'Inconnu, Creepy, Vampirella and L'Écho des savanes.

Les Olympiades truquées (1980, rewritten in 1987) and Bébé-miroir (1988) were created in parallel, and are two coming of age novels, each featuring teenage girls who have everything working against them. Les Olympiades truquées won the Prix Rosny aîné in 1988.

She has also written several novels for young people, the first of which was Nunatak, published in 1983. An adventure novel, it features children forced to engage in gladiator fights for the pleasure of adults. Comme un feu de sarments (1990) is also a coming of age novel as well as a historical novel with a political context, set during a winegrowers' revolt. In L'Océanide (1992), the Earthlings exploit the Océanides, humans who have evolved on an ocean planet. This relationship of domination is challenged by the love of a Terrine and an Oceanid.

Her coming of age novel Les Diables blancs, published in 1993, starts during the Paris Commune and goes on in New Caledonia, in the same environment as La Colonie perdue published in 1998.

La Chambre de sable published in 2008 is a contemporary novel oscillating between realism and onirism.

At the 2025 Eurocon she was honoured as a European Grandmaster in the ESFS Awards.

Private life Joëlle Wintrebert was an amateur beekeeper. In 2000, she was living in the region of Montpellier. Her partner Henri Lehalle, is a professor of psychology and author of multiple essays on science fiction. Together they wrote .

Selected publications