Festival & Co - Shakespeare & Company THIS WEEKEND

 Text: Brendan Seibel

An international collection of authors, poets, essayists and dramatists are converging on Paris. Shakespeare & Co. is holding their fourth bi-annual literary festival packing readings, panel discussions and performances into a three day weekend. VINGT Paris is proud to partner Festival & Co for the first time this year as the event promises to be a highlight of the summer season. 

This year's theme, Storytelling and Politics, explores the relationship between writers and the world around them. Discussions on the responsibilities of authors as commentators on society, the role of literature as escapism, and the poignancy of the contemporary literary scene will bring together some of the most respected wordsmiths on either side of the fiction line.

In addition to the festival taking place at Parc René Viviani, across the Seine from Notre Dame, special events are spread throughout town once the sun goes down. 

On June 16th dissident Chinese author and playwright Gao Xing Jian will be appearing at Bibliothéque National de France.

Five speakers will have fifteen minutes to disseminate their views on achievement, inspiration or obsession as a part of 5x15. Shadow puppets, smoke and mirrors, song and dance are just some of what you can expect when The Paper Cinema comes to town. A performance by musician and storyteller Zena Edwards rounds off June 18th at Réfectoire des Cordeliers.

As the festival draws to a close on June 20th Shakespeare & Co. will host Porchlight Storytelling. Speakers have ten minutes to wax philosophical on the theme Strange Bedfellows: Stories of Alliance.

The festival has called on a diverse crowd of participants whose work reflects the political landscape of our world. Storytellers from Europe, Africa, Asia and America cover the bases through their plays, poems and novels. Most readings and panels will take place in English with French translation.

Fiction: 

Fantasy writer Philip Pullman has rocketed to success on the back of his Dark Materials Trilogy and Sally Lockhart mysteries. His work has been brought to the screen as The Golden Compass as well as in several BBC adaptations. Despite achieving success and acclaim Pullman's atheism has sparked controversy in some corners of the world, dragging the very act of writing under the political and social microscope.

Will Self's speculative fiction represents the fiercest school of dark satire laid in print. Through years of tabloid scrutiny Self has unleashed a torrent of dark cultural commentary through essays and novels, attacking the accepted standards of this world through an impressive vernacular and sharp eye for everyday horrors.

French author Mathais Enard injects his stories with doses of reality from world conflict. His 157-page sentence, Zone, follows an intelligence officer en route to selling his collection of human atrocities.

Petina Gappah is a full time lawyer whose first book, An Elegy for Easterly, tells stories of her homeland Zimbabwe.

Australian Nam Le turned from law to writing and produced the critically acclaimed 2008 short story collection The Boat.

The magical-realism of Jeanette Winterson has been traversing the battegrounds of sex and desire, passion and madness for over twenty years.

Non-Fiction:

Outspoken scion of Pakistan's premiere political dynasty, Fatima Bhutto is a respected journalist and author. Daughter to insurgent Mir Murtaza and niece of the assassinated Benazir, Bhutto has railed on the injustices perpetrated by her homeland's ruling elite regardless of political or family lines. Painstaking research through the past and around the world produced Songs of the Blood and Sword, a memoir to her murdered father.

Columnist Ian Jack is driven by an insatiable curiosity and desire to cover issues from the ground up. His affable writing dismantles the complexity of British politics and culture while skillfully navigating between rhetoric and hyperbole. The recent collection, The Country Formerly Known as Great Britain, gathers twenty years of articles highlighting Jack's uncanny ability to connect the past and present.

The journalism of Mark Gevisser has explored the landscape of South Africa from sexuality to politics. His exhausting work on former president Thabo Mbeki produced the award-winning biography,Thabo Mbeki, A Legacy of Liberation: Thabo Mbeki and the Future of the South African Dream.

War correspondent Janine di Giovanni has covered the most desperate battle zones in the world, including Bosnia, Palestine and Kosovo.

American journalist Emma Larkin's dedication to the tumultuous state of Burma yielded the historical travelogue, Finding George Orwell in Burma.

Le Monde columnist Christian Salmon endeavors to dismantle the impact of public relations and marketing on government policy and politics.His latest book, Kate Moss Machine, examines the mechanizations of the image industry.

The tormented love between Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir is exposed and unraveled in Carole Seymour-Jones' A Dangerous Liaison. The Welsh author has similarly explored the relationship between T.S. and Vivienne Eliot, and has written a biography on Beatrice Webb.

Lawyer and human rights activist Raja Shehadeh has produced several memoirs on his life in Palestine. Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, follows Shehadeh through his daily walks and traces the changing landscape of a contested land.

Originally a founding member of the Students for a Democratic Society, André Schiffrin came to helm powerhouse publisher Pantheon Books for three decades. Abandoning the corporate world to found The New Press, Schiffrin's insights to the publishing industry were unveiled in The Business of Books.

Poetry/Theatre:

In reaction to the policies of apartheid South Africa Breyten Breytenbach went into self imposed exile. He mastered the art of Afrikaans poetry, writing political pieces from his adopted home of Paris. Arrested during a return visit and imprisoned for seven years under charges of treason Breytenbach continued to work in both Afrikaans and English, publishing his memoir Confessions of an Albino Terrorist upon release. 

Before taking the stage as a performance poet Zena Edwards had already toured the world collaborating with a female a capella troupe and musician Pops Mohamed. After returning to London to hone her craft as a spoken word artist Edwards devised her solo show Security, a microcosm on her North London home told through the many voices of multicultural Tottenham.

Writer of plays and scripts, director of stage and screen, David Hare's contributions to the world of drama earned him knighthood as the 20th century drew to a close. Throughout the 70's Hare alternated between university residencies and founding theater groups. Accepting the stewardship of England's National Theater in 1984 he has gone onto write over 15 plays, adapted pieces by Chekov and Brecht, and drafted screenplays for film and television.

The work of Hanif Kureishi has tackled the modern cultural battlegrounds of race and sexuality. His screenplay for My Beautiful Laundrette received critical acclaim and led Kureishi behind the camera for the production of his London Kills Me. He received the Whitbread Award for his first novel,The Buddha of Suburbia, a semi-autobiographical account of growing up biracial in 1970's London. His recent non fiction work,The Word and the Bomb, examines the question of Muslim Identity in England.

The poet Jack Mapanje rebelled against Malawi's dictatorial regime. He rejected government promotion of a regional dialect as national language, writing in English and eventually becoming head of the department of English at Malawi University. After his poetry collection Of Chameleons and Gods was published and subsequently pulled from shelves, Mapanje was arrested and imprisoned without trial. Upon release he emigrated to England where he continues to teach and write.

Performance poet Tjawangwa Dema came up through the Botswana slamscene, developing a rhythmic and modern style of storytelling. She has graced clubs and stages around the English speaking world, participated in poetry workshops and been a key player in expression education through Power in the Voice and Exodus Live Poetry! collective.

Poet-laureate of San Francisco Jack Hirschman is possibly one of the most knowledgeable scholars of world poetry. A leftist activist since the Vietnam War, Hirschman's work echoes the Beat era gritty passion.

While growing up in South Africa Denis Hirson's father was jailed for his anti-apartheid politics. Informed by personal experiences he has written four books on the segregated country as well as translating and editing volumes of South African poetry.

Louisiana born Yusef Komunyakaa grew up during the civil rights struggle. His slang and jazz infused poetry influences a generation of American urban writers and garnered him a Pulitzer Prize.

Nobel Laureate in Literature Gao Xianjian survived the Communist re-education camps during China's cultural revolution. Surviving with the spirit of creativity intact he has worked in the arts for decades, writing, directing and critiquing. A medical misdiagnosis inspired a ten month walking tour along the Yangtze which resulted in his novel Soul Mountain. His blatantly political plays and books are now banned throughout China.

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[The Editor]

There will be books in French at a L'arbre à Lettres stand, delicious coffee at the Caféothèque stand and unbelievable sandwiches at the Bob's Kitchen stand. Between events, Storytellers will be randomly roaming the square recounting stories.