Aimée de Jongh (born 1988, Waalwijk, the Netherlands) is a graphic novelist and animator, whose books have been published in more than 30 countries. She has won numerous international awards for her graphic novels and was nominated for three Eisner Awards for Days of Sand and Sixty Years in Winter. [1][2] Her books have received the Prix Saint-Michel, the Atomium Comic Strip Prizes and the International Manga Award.[3][4]
Early in her teens, Aimée created manga-inspired small press comics with the Dutch collective Cheesecake! Studio. At the age of 17, she published her first comic book Aimée TV. From 2012 until 2017, she created the daily comic strip Snippers for the Dutch paper Metro, which was collected in nine albums.
In 2014, she published her first graphic novel De Terugkeer van de Wespendief (The Return of the Honey Buzzard), which won the Prix Saint-Michel and was adapted to a live-action film by Stanley Kolk. In 2018 she got the opportunity to collaborate with the acclaimed Belgian scenarist Zidrou, which resulted in the award-winning L'Obsolescence Programmée de Nos Sentiments (Blossoms in Autumn). In 2019, Aimée created the autobiographical TAXI!, about four intriguing taxi rides she had, for the Canadian publishing house Conundrum Press. Her international breakthrough came in 2021, with the release of the bestselling graphic novel Jours de Sable (Days of Sand) by the French publishing house Dargaud.[5] The Eisner-nominated book about the American Dust Bowl won numerous awards in Japan, the United States, Belgium, the Netherlands and France. In 2022, Aimée collaborated with French author Ingrid Chabbert on Soixante Printemps en Hiver (Sixty Years in Winter) for the Aire Libre Collection by publisher Dupuis, which was nominated for an Eisner Award. In September 2024, her eagerly anticipated graphic novel adaptation of William Golding's classic Lord of the Flies will be published by Faber & Faber.[6]
Aimée's career in graphic journalism started with a project about the refugee camps on the Greek island of Lesbos in 2017, the 25-page comic Europe's Waiting Room for Dutch newspaper NRC. The comic was published online and as a booklet in Brazil by Conrad Editora as A Sala de Espera da Europa: Uma história de refugiados. In 2022, she drew a short story for the same newspaper about asylum seekers in Ter Apel, the Netherlands. A short story about Ukrainian refugees in the Netherlands was published in 2023.
In 2022 she created a comic for the sci-fi magazine Métal Hurlant and in 2023 she collaborated with the acclaimed Belgian scenarist Jean van Hamme on a short story which appeared in the album Miséricorde. She was asked to draw hommages to the classic Franco-Belgian comic series Gaston and Les Tuniques Bleues for publishing house Dupuis.
Aimée studied Animation at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam, KASK in Ghent and the Gobelins Summer School in Paris. Over the years, she has worked in the animation industry in various roles. In 2014, she was artist in residence at 18th Street Arts Center in Los Angeles, where she created animations in collaboration with contemporary artist Miljohn Ruperto. One of the resulting art installations was shown at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York City during the Whitney Biennial.
She directed and animated the short film Aurora, created storyboards for Hisko Hulsing's Amazon Prime series Undone, and animated a series of 12 music videos for the Dutch TV show De Wereld Draait Door. Her most ambitious animation project was Behind the Telescopes, a 71-minute long theatrical film, created in collaboration with harpist Lavinia Meijer and sound designer Arthur Antoine. In 2021, Aimée created 6 animated short films for the Rijksmuseum's exhibition Slavery.