The International Library and BCLF Present Elektrik: Francophone Literature in Glittering Translations
Join us in the CAT office in San Francisco for croissants, coffee, and conversation as we watch this live-streamed event together.
What does it mean to be Caribbean in the 21st century? Is it imprinted in the landscape, the language, or is it perhaps, in the words of Mireille Jean-Gilles (tr. Eric Fishman), “a place that lives in me, and that I unfurl, like a nomad his tent, in each place where I live”? In Elektrik: Caribbean Writing(opens in a new tab), eight female writers from Haiti, Martinique, and Guadeloupe explore the beauty, pain, and complexity wrapped up in their identity. Writers Marie-Célie Agnant and Gaël Octavia join poet and translator Danielle Legros Georges to read from the collection and discuss language as defiance with Myriam J. A. Chancy.
Co-presented by the Brooklyn Caribbean Literary Festival.
This is a hybrid event. Marie-Célie Agnant, Danielle Legros Georges, and Myriam J. A. Chancy joining remotely and Gaël Octavia appearing in-person at the American Library in Paris (in Paris; 19h30 CEST). A live remote viewing will be held at The Center for Fiction in Brooklyn (1:30pm ET) and Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco (10:30am PT). You can also livestream this event worldwide.
About The International Library
This event is part of The International Library, a series launched in collaboration with the American Library in Paris(opens in a new tab) and the Center for Fiction(opens in a new tab) in Brooklyn which will offer conversations across time, place, and language. The International Library celebrates the live diffusion of in-person conversations in the hope of connecting new audiences across land and sea for a collective, intercultural experience. These conversations will broach deeper questions about writing and translation as we learn to think critically about how stories are told, investigating the points of view, the timing of the translations, and the intended or assumed audiences as well as inspiration, philosophy, and craft.
Marie-Célie Agnant was born in 1953 in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and has lived in Canada since 1970. Her writings include four novels, two short story collections, and three volumes of poetry. She has also worked as a storyteller, an interpreter, a teacher, and an environmental activist. In her literary works, she offers lyrical explorations of the unsaid, legacies of violence, and loss in families and societies consumed by memories they share in silence. She received the Prix Alain-Grandbois of the Academie des Lettres du Quebec in 2017 for her most recent collection of poetry, Femmes de terres brûlées (2016).
Danielle Legros Georges is the author of The Dear Remote Nearness of You (2016) and translator of Island Heart (2021), a collection of poems of Haitian-French writer Ida Faubert, among other titles. Her poems have been widely published, anthologized, and included in international artistic commissions and collaborations. In 2014, Legros Georges was named Boston’s poet laureate. She is a professor emeritus of creative writing at Lesley University.
Born and raised in Martinique and now living in Paris, Gaël Octavia writes novels, poetry, theater, and short stories. She also paints and makes short films. Inspired by Martinican society, her texts explore themes of family, identity, and the female condition. Her plays have been read and performed in France, the United States, the Caribbean, Reunion Island, and Africa. Her first novel, La fin de Mame Baby, received the Wepler Jury Special Mention Award in 2017.
Myriam J. A. Chancy, Ph.D. is a Guggenheim Fellow and Hartley Burr Alexander Chair of the Humanities at Scripps College. She is the author of What Storm, What Thunder, a novel on the 2010 Haiti earthquake (Harper Collins Canada/Tin House USA 2021), awarded a 2022 American Book Award (ABA) from the Before Columbus Foundation, and named a “Best Book of 2021,” by NPR, Kirkus, the Chicago Public Library, the New York Public Library, Library Journal, the Boston Globe, Amazon Books & Canada’s Globe & Mail. Her forthcoming books include Harvesting Haiti: Reflections on Unnatural Disasters (University of Texas Press, 2023), Spirit of Haiti (20th anniversary edition, SUNY Press, 2023) and Village Weavers: A Novel (Tin House 2024). Her recent writings have appeared in Whetstone.com Journal, Electric Literature, and Guernica.