Sabrina Calvo was born on 19 September 1974 in Marseille.[3][4] She came out as trans in 2017 in the Mauvais Genre programme at the Utopiales festival.[5] She lives between Paris and Montreal.[5]
Sabrina Calvo is a writer and also a performance artist, and has collaborated with artists including Jeff Mills at the Musée du Louvre in 2015.[6] She has given talks and round tables at the Chroniques Digital Arts Biennial,[7]Mutek,[8]Sonic Protest,[9]Étonnants Voyageurs [fr],[10] les Utopiales, les Imaginales, les Intergalactiques and la Maison de la poésie[11], among others.
In 2021 she spoke out in favour of reforming sexist and toxic behaviour in the world of fantasy literature publishing.[12][13]
Sabrina Calvo co-wrote the virtual reality drama 7 Lives, directed by Jan Kounen. 7 Lives is part of the 2019 VR selection at the Tribeca Film Festival.[14][15]
In 2004, based on a script by Sabrina Calvo, Thomas Azuélos [fr] drew Télémaque,[19] in which the author's dreamlike world’ is expressed. In 2006, the duo published Akhénaton, co-written with Thomas Azuélos, tackling the subject of transidentity. ActuaBD described the work as [20]
A radical album, with a minimalist and unbridled style, to be reserved for fans of absolute modernity
In 2015, Sabrina Calvo published Sous la Colline, a transfeminist[21] urban fantasy novel exploring the intimate topography of Le Corbusier's Cité Radieuse in Marseille and exploiting the myths of the city.[22][23] Her counter-dystopian novel Toxoplasma, featuring an anti-capitalist commune in Montreal[24] and questioning gender identities, won the Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire in 2018.[25][26]
She continued her exploration of these themes with Melmoth Furieux, an uchronia published in 2021, featuring an update of the Paris Commune in an alternative, policed and authoritarian present.[22][27] In this novel, she takes her inspiration from Eulalie Papavoine, a dressmaker and ambulance driver during the Paris Commune, for the book's main character and narrator named Fi. Fi is a seamstress from Belleville whose brother, a Disney employee, set himself on fire during the inauguration of Disneyland in 1992, and who joins a self-managed commune in Belleville to organise the revolt against the militia. The book's title is a reference to Balzac's short story Melmoth réconcilié and Charles Robert Maturin's novel Melmoth ou l'Homme errant.[28][29]
Her novels, often classified as science fiction, explore the geographical worlds of cities such as Marseille, Paris and Montreal, in a dystopian, dreamlike universe inspired by maps of places and revolutionary historical events from an anti-capitalist, anarchist and transfeminist perspective, at the crossroads between the genres of cyber punk and urban fantasy.[23][30][31] She is cited as one of the emblematic authors of lesbian literature.[32]
Sabrina Calvo's novels and productions have won awards. Her novel Wonderful won the 2002 Prix Julia-Verlanger [fr].[33]Sous la Colline won the 2016 Prix Bob-Morane [fr], and Toxoplasma won the 2018 Grand Prix de l'Imaginaire[26] and the Prix Rosny aîné the same year.[2]
