Nicolas Finet (born July 24, 1959) is a French writer, editor, consultant, journalist and speaker.
Throughout his many activities, he shares his in depth knowledge of contemporary Asian cultures as well as his long-lasting companionship with comics.
Nicolas Finet began his professional career in written journalism at the beginning of the 1980’s. Formed in daily press (La Presse de la Manche, France-Soir), he decided very early on to work as a free-lance reporter. A choice which led him to nourish many collaborations, with no initial specialty, but with a strong predilection for certain subjects such as cultural news, images of all nature and the Far-East.
During some twenty years of journalism, he traveled to almost sixty countries and has had his investigations, reports and interviews published in more than hundred publications: Les Échos, Télérama, Les Nouvelles Littéraires, (À Suivre), 20 ans, L’Express, L’Usine Nouvelle, Le Nouvel Economiste, Géo, Ça m’intéresse, CFDT Magazine, Grands Reportages, CB News, Le Monde, VSD, BàT, Voyager Magazine, Télé Star, Rock en Stock, Challenges, Voyages d’Affaires, etc.
This eclectic trajectory led him to experience diverse editorial functions. He has been the editor-in chief of Max, a monthly journal, since 1989. In the same year he created Angoulême, Le magazine, an official review of The Angoulême International Comics Festival. In 1995 he was the editorial adviser and chief editor of Lettre d’Europe, a cultural bi-monthly report on the French presidency of the European Union.
Additionally to written journalism, he also experienced other media forms, such as television (he presided during one season as an editorial coordinator) and the Internet, where, beginning in 1999, he conceived and coordinated a legal website, signed a literary column during two years and participated in investigations on Asia for a website dedicated to tourism.
In 1995, Nicolas Finet created N2 The Emerging Side, a news agency specialized in the coverage of Eastern Asian, which provides original and exclusive editorial content (studies, investigations, books, reports, photography, etc.) to a media, editorial, institutional and corporate-based clientele.
Throughout the years 2000-2010, Nicolas Finet synthesized his knowledge of Asia and his expertise in comics with new occupations. He was put in charge of the Asian sector for The Angoulême International Comics Festival, initiated the translation of Korean and Chinese comic-books for many francophone publishing houses, led conferences and readings on comics in Seoul, Paris, Saint-Petersburg and Guangzhou and carried out the commission of the first edition of the Exposition universelle de la bande dessinée (World comic fair) presented in January 2007 at the Angoulême Festival.
Nicolas Finet has participated in a half-dozen joint-publications, has developed storylines for two comic-books, has written three travel guides and two artists monographs, a memorial-book — (À Suivre) 1978-1997 – Une aventure en bandes dessinées – and an anthology of travel writings in Asia, Le puéril jaune.
In 2008, he became the publication director and one of the main authors of DicoManga, the first encyclopedia dictionary on Japanese comics, published by Fleurus, and created a series of conferences devoted to the history of Japanese graphic narration with the Ecole européenne supérieure de l’image (EESI) of Angoulême. In 2009, Nicolas Finet was commissioner of two exhibits: the exhibit dedicated to the Korean publishing house Sai Comics at the 36th Angoulême International Comics Festival and the exhibition Chine II presented by the 16th comic book festival in Bastia. He also directed the postscript of Ari Folman and David Polonsky’s comic inspired by the film Waltz with Bashir and wrote the texts for the book Secrets Défense, based on Michelle Auboiron’s paintings.
In 2010, after having been one of the commissioners of the collective exhibit at the Angoulême festival on Russian comics, Nicolas Finet wrote the preface for the unfinished anthology of Kazuhiko Miyaya’s L’Éveil and participated, as a consultant on China, in the exhibition Cent pour cent bande dessinée presented at the Cité internationale de la bande dessinée et de l’image, for which he wrote the notes assigned to China, Korea and Japan. In April of 2010, with the release of Luc Besson’s film The Extraordinary Adventures of Adèle Blanc-Sec, he wrote Le Livre d’Adèle with Tardi, a reminiscence and portrait of his famous heroine.
In 2011, he was one of the principal contributors of the collective work 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die, published in Great Britain by Cassell Illustrated, and the next year carried out the coordination of the French edition of this work, published by Flammarion with the title Les 1001 BD qu’il faut avoir lues dans sa vie. In 2013, he was one of the three writers of the city guide Seoul published in three languages (French, English, Korean) by Louis Vuitton. The same year, with the release of the movie Snowpiercer by Korean director Bong Joon-ho, inspired by the French comic book Le Transperceneige by Lob, Rochette and Legrand, he wrote the album Histoires du Transperceneige and then, in January 2014, wrote the foreword of San Mao le petit vagabond by Zhang Leping, a classic Chinese comic strip published for the first time in French-speaking countries.
During the 41st edition of the Angouleme International Comics Festival, having became the curator of this major event, Nicolas Finet carried out the commission of Tardi et la Grande Guerre, an ambitious exhibition dedicated to Jacques Tardi’s works on 1st World War, and then in January 2015 carried out again the commission of Jirô Taniguchi, l’homme qui rêve, the first big retrospective dedicated in Europe to this major Japanese artist.