Born on May 10, 1982, Vincent Poirier has been a bookseller specializing in comics since 2000 at the BDfugue Café bookshop in Annecy, of which he became co-manager in 2017 with Jean-Jacques Roby (who founded the bookshop in 1981). He is also artistic director of the Salon de la Bande Dessinée du Lac d'Annecy : SevrierBD.
Born in 1987, Sonia Déchamps joined the editorial staff of Europe 1 at the age of 20 while studying history, where she worked for six years before joining Mouv', Radio France's youth radio station. A literary journalist who has also worked for France Culture (Le Réveil Culturel, La Dispute), Polar+, Le Monde des ados, Les Cahiers de la BD and Casemate, she initiated the " Les jeudis de la bande dessinée " cycle at the Centre Pompidou and was co-artistic director of the Angoulême Festival between 2020 and 2023. Sonia is now a publisher (Virages graphiques).
The question of passing on reading practices, the skills needed to acquire and develop in order to decipher comics, the question of the desire and pleasure of reading, sometimes of remediation, but also the necessary reference points for finding one's way around heritage and contemporary production - all these elements are central to all the activities of the BD Hauts-de-France cluster in all its facets. In a word, to read comics and make others read them.
Co-creator of the Rendez-Vous de la bande dessinée d'Amiens in 1996, Pascal Mériaux now heads the Pôle BD Hauts-de-France. In addition to the festival, which takes place every year in June, the cluster coordinates or runs some nine hundred half-day face-to-face educational events throughout the region, plays a resource role for all projects related to the 9th art and hosts a publishing house specializing in children's comics, of which he is also director. Curator of numerous exhibitions for the past twenty-seven years, he is also Chairman of the Agence régionale livre et lecture des Hauts-de-France.
