Nadine Ribault

Nadine Ribault (1964-2021) is a French novelist, short-story writer and translator. She was the first laureate of the Randell Cottage.

After several years in the Paris region, Scotland and the Netherlands, her family settled in Metz, where Nadine Ribault began studying literature at the Sorbonne in Paris. She taught in France and then in Japan, and in 1995 decided to devote herself to literature. It was at the foot of the Japanese Alps that she wrote her first collection of short stories, Un caillou à la mer, published in 1999. Her subsequent travels took her to China, New Zealand and various European countries.

In October 2002, during her time at the Randell Cottage, she met New Zealand writer Janet Frame, a meeting that would prove decisive for her and her work. With translator Jean Anderson, they produced the previously unpublished French translation of Janet Frame's first book, The Lagoon, a collection of short stories published in 1951. For Nadine Ribault, “In unbearable reality, one object focuses our attention. It is the intention to survive. Frame's work is a cry for life. Its only desirable property is writing”. 

Following her residency, she published the novel Coeur Anxieux.