Simon Johannin

Simon Johannin (b. 1993, Mazamet, France) is a French novelist and poet who grew up in the Hérault, near the Montagne Noire, in a rural environment where his parents kept bees. He left home at seventeen, studied cinema briefly at the University of Montpellier before dropping out, and trained at the atelier d'espace urbain at La Cambre in Brussels from 2013 to 2016. He lives and works in Marseille and publishes with Éditions Allia.

His debut novel, L'Été des charognes (Allia, 2017), a chronicle of a childhood in the rural south of France, attracted immediate attention for its raw, rhythmic prose — saturated with the sights, sounds, and violence of a particular landscape. It was subsequently adapted for the stage by Hubert Colas (Diphtong Cie). Nino dans la nuit (Allia, 2019), co-written with Capucine Azaviele, pursues the same incandescent voice in a portrait of a young generation adrift between the Foreign Legion, precarious labour, and the Parisian night, and was adapted for the screen by Laurent Micheli in 2026. Nous sommes maintenant nos êtres chers (Allia, 2020) and Ici commence un amour (2024) — which follows his alter ego Théo between Paris and Marseille — extended his exploration of bodies, desire, and the passage of time. His prose poetry collection L'immobile (Décades éditions, 2016) preceded the novels.

His engagement with the stage has extended beyond prose adaptation: Le Dialogue (2023) is a text of theatrical form and mystical inspiration; the same year he signed the libretto for the opera Ressusciter la rose, a world premiere for the centenary of the Villa Noailles; and he has contributed a text to a commission for the Troupe of the Comédie-Française.