Events

Mingmei Yip will read from her latest novel Petals from the Sky, a Buddhist, interracial love story set in Hong Kong, Manhattan and Paris. Mingmei is also a professional qin musician and after her reading she will treat us to a special performance. ‘Yip’s second novel is a serious, engaging story of faith, devotion, and the commingling of cultures.’ – Booklist

Mingmei believes a novel should entertain the reader but also give something more. Her debut novel Peach Blossom Pavilion is the story of the last Chinese Geisha, who overcomes adversity to achieve a happy and peaceful life.  Mingmei’s new new novel Petals from the Sky, is a poignant Buddhist love story, but also about how life challenges can lead to the growth of compassion and the wisdom to know when to persist and when to let go.

When she was a child, Mingmei Yip made up stories like ‘how the moon reached to slap the sun’ and ‘how the dim sum on my plate suddenly got up to tango.’ At 15, she was thrilled that not only her article got published but she was paid ten dollars for it. Now Mingmei is a best-selling novelist and children’s book writer and illustrator. She has written five books in Chinese and two in English. Mingmei received her PhD from the University of Paris, Sorbonne, and has also lectured in Chinese calligraphy and music – her great love in music is the qin – the most ancient Chinese stringed instrument on which she gives frequent lectures and performances. http://www.mingmeiyip.com.

Mingmei Yip lira des extraits de son dernier roman, Petals from the Sky, une histoire d'amour bouddhiste et interethnique entre Hong Kong, Manhattan et Paris. Mingmei joue aussi du qin et nous interprètera quelques morceaux à la suite de sa lecture.

Tonight, with éditions Belfond, we welcome Richard Flanagan, one of the most original and impressive novelists working in the English language today. He will be reading from Wanting, a novel of magnificent power and reach. ‘One of the best novels of this year… Flanagan’s cast of virtuoso characters…are vivid, memorable beings, burnt into the retina of the imagination long after the novel comes to an end… An irresistibly good story.’ The Times

Richard Flanagan was born in Tasmania in 1961. Regarded internationally as one of Australia's pre-eminent novelists, his award-winning novels Death of a River Guide, The Sound of One Hand Clapping, Gould’s Book of Fish and The Unknown Terrorist have been published to popular success and critical acclaim in 27 countries. He directed a feature film of The Sound of One Hand Clapping and co-wrote the screenplay of Baz Luhrmann’s film, Australia. Tonight he will be introduced by and in discussion with Steven Gale.

On Wanting:

1841. In the remote penal colony of Van Diemen’s Land, a barefoot aboriginal girl wearing a red silk dress sits for her portrait. She is Mathinna, the adopted daughter of the island’s governor, Sir John Franklin, and his wife, Lady Jane, and the subject of a grand experiment in civilization – one that will determine whether science, Christianity and reason can be imposed in place of savagery, impulse and desire.

A quarter of a century passes. Somewhere in the Arctic, Sir John Franklin has disappeared, along with his crew and two ships, on an expedition to find the fabled Northwest Passage. England is horrified as reports of cannibalism filter back from search parties, no one more so than the most celebrated novelist of the day, Charles Dickens, for whom Franklin’s story becomes a means to plumb the frozen depths of his soul.

As several lives become conjoined by unexpected events and tragedies, Wanting transforms into a remarkable meditation on the ways in which desire – and its denial – shape our lives.

‘In dense, poetic prose, Flanagan characterises something that exists across human experience, above and beyond historical particulars and cultural differences: "The way we are denied love. And the way we suddenly discover it being offered us, in all its pain and infinite heartbreak."’ Giles Foden, The Guardian

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/sep/26/wanting-richard-flanagan-book-review

Nous accueillerons, avec les éditions Belfond, Richard Flanagan, l'un des plus originaux et impressionnants romanciers contemporains de langue anglaise. Il lira un extrait de Désirer, un fabuleux roman d'une portée incroyable.

‘Désirer de l'écrivain australien Richard Flanagan est un beau roman plein d'émotion et de finesse, une de ces œuvres que l'on referme avec un pincement au cœur.’ – Le Monde http://www.lemonde.fr/idees/chronique/2010/07/19/richard-flanagan-desirer_1389544_3232.html

Tonight there is a special performance just outside Shakespeare and Company (please note the play will be cancelled if there is rain). Eva the Chaste, a new monologue play by Barbara Hammond, takes place in that hour when night turns to dawn on a June morning on Dublin’s Coast Road, where, after 20 years in Paris, Eva has returned to her birthplace to face the consequences of an act of love.

Aedin Moloney, whose mesmerizing interpretation of Molly Bloom’s soliloquy in James Joyce’s Ulysses brings the house down every year at Colum McCann’s Bloomsday celebration, performs.

Barbara Hammond is a 2010 Edward Albee Fellow, and her plays and film have been seen and won awards from Queensland, Australia to Dublin, Ireland – but mainly in New York City where she is a long-time resident of the Lower East Side.

Ce soir, repésentation exceptionnelle juste devant Shakespeare and Company (la pièce sera annulée en cas de pluie). Eva the Chaste, un nouveau monologue de Barbara Hammond.

In collaboration with Festival America at Vincennes we present two of America’s most exciting novelists Nick Flynn and Adam Haslette who will be reading from a selection of their work. Afterwards stay for piano music (upstairs) with jazz maestro Steve Tromans.

Nick Flynn’s Another Bullshit Night in Suck City won the PEN/Martha Albrand Award for the Art of the Memoir and has been translated into ten languages. He is also the author of two books of poetry, Some Ether, which won the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award, and Blind Huber. Some of the places his poems, essays and non-fiction have appeared in include The New Yorker, The Paris Review, National Public Radio’s ‘This American Life,’ and The New York Times Book Review. He worked as a ‘field poet’ and as an artistic collaborator on the documentary film Darwin’s Nightmare, which won an Academy Award for best feature documentary in 2006. One semester a year he teaches at the University of Houston, and spends the rest of the year elsewhere.

Adam Haslett is the author of the short story collection You Are Not a Stranger Here and the novel Union Atlantic. His story collection was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize and a National Book Award and has been translated into 15 languages. His essays and fiction have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, The Atlantic Monthly, Zoetrope All-Story, Best American Short Stories, The O'Henry Prize Stories, and National Public Radio’s Selected Shorts. In 2006, he won the PEN/Malamud Award for accomplishment in short fiction and has also won the PEN/WinshipAward for the best book by a New England author. A graduate of Swarthmore College, the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, and Yale Law School, he has been a visiting professor at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and Columbia University.

Steve Tromans is a jazz pianist and composer.  Tonight he will perform ‘Bebop of the Beat Generation’ - solo piano deconstructions of bebop jazz classics that influenced the Beats.  ‘Fearlessly exploring the margins of regular jazz and free-improv.’ John Fordham, The Guardian Pick of the Week

In a specially programmed evening of contemporary jazz, pianist and composer Steve Tromans revisits classic jazz tunes of the 1940s and 1950s, giving a unique 21^st-Century sensibility to bop classics.  This is the music that filled the air around the Beat writers as they honed their craft.  They breathed in deeply of these ‘holy sounds’, and when they exhaled, they released a series of books and poems that changed the course of 20^th-Century literature.  Tromans’ music provides a chance to re-sound these glorious echoes into the new millenium.

Holy the groaning saxophone! Holy the bop apocalypse!

Holy the jazzbands marijuana hipsters peace & junk & drums!

Allen Ginsberg, Footnote to Howl

Composer-pianist-arranger-researcher Steve Tromans studied with John Mayer, pioneer of World Jazz and has performed in concerts and festivals across the world. In 2003 he was commissioned by Birmingham Jazz to compose Beat Series Part I: Howl - a musical setting of the poetry of Allen Ginsberg, which has since been performed several times around the UK to critical acclaim.  In 2009 he premiered parts II, III and IV, musical settings of the poetry of Gregory Corso’s Bomb, Jack Kerouac’s On The Road, and William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch.

En collaboration avec le Festival America de Vincennes, nous présenterons deux des plus passionnants écrivains américains, Nick Flynn et Adam Haslette, qui liront quelques morceaux choisis. Juste après, restez avec nous pour une représentation au piano du maestro du jazz Steve Tromans.

Tonight Anne Marsella will read from The Baby of Belleville, a delightful novel filled with intrigue, eccentric characters and many surprises.  Anne Marsella will be introduced by Susan Marson, author of Le Temps de L'autobiographie, Violette Leduc ou la mort avant la lettre. Anne Marsella lira des extraits de The Baby of Belleville, un roman charmant et fascinant plein de personnages excentriques et de surprises.

Jane de la Rochefoucault has just brought her firstborn home to her flat in Paris and her world is in chaos. As well as the nappies, the night-time gurgling, and the constant feeding, she can barely move for packing cases and the cumbersome musical instruments that her aristocratic French composer husband keeps inventing. And then one evening, a knock on the door brings some mysterious visitors: three kung fu experts bearing gifts for the baby. When the kung fu trio go missing (along with some cars), Jane and Charles suddenly find themselves being interrogated by two French police inspectors who suspect that the kung fu-ers had links to Muslims Without Borders - an organization dedicated to freeing the brothers wherever they are in chains, and - ma foi! - that Jane’s mother-in-law may have a hand in the whole thing too.

Originally from California's San Joaquin Valley, Anne Marsella now lives in Paris with her husband – a jazz musician – and their son. Her previous books are an acclaimed collection of stories, The Lost and Found and Other Stories (NYU Press), Patsy Boone (Editions de la Difference) and the novel Remedy (Portobello, 2007).
New York Times on The Lost and Found and Other Stories:

‘A collection showing immense mastery of character, dialect, and narrative. Marsella slips like a cat into myriad psyches and argots. Distinguished indeed.’