Sara Doke, born in 1968 in France, is a Belgian journalist, translator and author of science fiction and fantasy who is also an activist engaged for authors' rights.
Trained as a journalist,[2] Sara Doke is also a digital publisher and organiser of cultural events related to fantasy and Imaginary as well as an active advocate for authors rights. She is president of honour of the Syndicat des écrivains de langue française [fr](SELF). She went to court with her husband Ayerdahl, also an SF writer, representing authors against the RELIre digitisation and commercialisation project of unavailable books of the twentieth century.[3] She organised the 2003 Convention nationale française de science-fiction [fr] in Flemalle and helped to organise the Imaginaire festival in Brussels, at the Maison du livre from 1999 to 2002.[4][5]
She chairs the jury for the Prix Julia-Verlanger [fr] awarded each year at the Utopiales festival in Nantes.[5][6]
In 2015, she published her first feminist science fiction novel, Techno faérie, with Les Moutons électriques [fr].[9] Using numerous documents and illustrations, the author paints a portrait of the 88 main fairies in the collective imagination, integrating them into technological society. In a second book, L'autre moitié du ciel (The other half of the sky), published in 2019, she proposes an inventory of women's imaginary heritage[3],[1].[10][8]
In 2020, along with Sylvie Denis, she was one of two guests at the French National Science Fiction Convention.[11]
Activism
In 2012, she was elected president of the Syndicat des écrivains de langue française along with Christian Vilà [fr]. However, in 2013, she stepped down from the presidency in favour of Jeanne-A Debats, retaining the honorary presidency. Alongside Ayerdhal, who died in 2015, she took a stand against the abuses of the ReLIRE [fr] project, and in November 2016 succeeded in having the project condemned by the Court of Justice of the European Union.[3][12]
^Dumont, Fabienne (2014). Des sorcières comme les autres: artistes et féministes dans la France des années 1970. Archives du féminisme. Rennes: Presses universitaires de Rennes. ISBN978-2-7535-3250-2.