Born November 22, 1969 in Rasht, Iran,Marjane Satrapi is an Iranian-French contemporary graphic novelist, illustrator, Academy Award-nominated animated film director, and children's book author.

Satrapi grew up in Tehran in a communist family which was involved with the communist and socialist movements in Iran, prior to the Iranian Revolution. She attended the Lyc?e Fran?ais there and witnessed, as a child, the growing suppression of civil liberties and the everyday-life consequences of Iranian politics, including the fall of the Shah, the early regime of Ruhollah Khomeini, and the first years of the Iran-Iraq war.

In 1983, at the age of 14, Satrapi was sent to Vienna, Austria, by her parents in order to flee the Iranian regime. According to her autobiographical graphic novel, Persepolis, she lived there during her high school years, returning to Iran for college. At college, she met a man named Reza, whom she married at age 21 and divorced roughly three years later.

She then studied Visual Communication, eventually obtaining a Master's Degree in Visual Communication from the School of Fine Arts in Tehran Islamic Azad University. Satrapi then moved to Strasbourg, France. She currently lives in Paris, where she works as an illustrator and an author of children's books.

Satrapi's career began in earnest when she met David B., a French comics artist. She adopted a style similar to his, especially in her earliest works. Satrapi became famous worldwide because of her critically acclaimed autobiographical graphic novels Persepolis and Persepolis 2, which describe her childhood in Iran and her adolescence in Europe. Persepolis won the Angoul?me Coup de Coeur Award at the Angoul?me International Comics Festival.

Her later publication, Broderies (Embroideries) was also nominated for the Angoul?me Album of the Year award in 2003, an award which was won by her most recent novel, Poulet aux prunes.