Meet the author

Michaël Crouzat.

Illustrator · France

Michaël Crouzat: French animator-turned-illustrator whose Angoulême-winning graphic novel Journey to Tomioka blends Japanese folklore with grief in the Fukushima exclusion zone.

Michaël Crouzat is a French illustrator who trained at the Émile Cohl school in Lyon and the Gobelins in Paris, spending fifteen years in animation on films including Ernest & Celestine and Funan before turning to comics. His graphic novel Journey to Tomioka, drawn in collaboration with writer Laurent Galandon, follows two siblings carrying their grandmother's ashes into the Fukushima exclusion zone, guided by folklore and shadowed by yokai conjured from the poisoned land. Crouzat's atmospheric, quietly beautiful artwork lends real tenderness to a story of grief, family and a landscape nature is slowly reclaiming. The book won the Youth Prize at the Angoulême International Comics Festival, a distinctive, thoughtful choice for older children ready for graphic novels that carry genuine emotional weight.