Beyond Words Live French Literature Festival

Négar Djavadi

Négar Djavadi is a French-Iranian scriptwiter, director, film editor and writer. She grew up in Teheran but fled the 1979 Islamic Revolution with her mother and her two sisters, horse-riding through Kurdistan. She studied cinema in Brussels, taught it in Paris and has been working in the film industry since then. In 2016, her debut novel, Disoriental, was published in France and won the Best Debut Novel Prize. Translated by Tina Kover and published in English by Europa Editions in 2018, it was nominated for the National Book Award in the Translation category.

https://www.europaeditions.com/author/222/negar-djavadi
http://www.lianalevi.fr/f/index.php?sp=livAut&auteur_id=255

Related / Latest Publication:

Négar Djavadi, Disoriental (Europa Editions, 2018)

Virginie Despentes

Virginie Despentes is a writer and filmmaker, and former maid, sex worker, and freelance rock journalist. Her first novel, Baise-Moi, a controversial story of rape and revenge, was published in 1992, adapted for film in 2000, and subsequently banned from French cinemas for twenty-eight years. She is the author of over fifteen further works, including Apocalypse Baby (2010) and Bye Bye Blondie (2004), and the autobiographical essay, King Kong Theory (2006). The first volume of her Vernon Subutex trilogy, published in English by MacLehose Press in a translation by Frank Wynne, was shortlisted for the 2018 Man Booker International Prize, and the trilogy has now been adapted to the screen by Cathy Verney with Romain Duris as Vernon Subutex.

https://www.maclehosepress.com/authors/2017/7/10/virginiedespentes
https://www.grasset.fr/virginie-despentes

Related / Latest Publication:

Virginie Despentes, Vernon Subutex 2 (Maclehose Press, 2018)

Tatiana de Rosnay

Born from a British mother and a French father, Tatiana de Rosnay writes both in French and in English. She worked as a press agent and a journalist and published her debut novel in 1992. Her first success came in 2006, with the publication of Sarah’s Key – turned into a film in 2011. With twelve published novels, four collections of short stories, two biographies, several other books and three film adaptations, she is one of France’s most read authors: in 2009, she was the 8th best-selling fiction writer in Europe. Her most recent novel, The Rain Watcher, was published in 2018 by World Editions. Originally written in English, it was translated into French by Anouk Neuhoff as Sentinelle de la pluie and published by Héloïse d’Ormesson.

http://tatianaderosnay.com/index.php/bio
https://www.worldeditions.co.uk/authors/tatiana-de-rosnay/

Related / Latest Publications:

	Tatiana de Rosnay, The Rain Watcher (World Editions, 2019)
	Tatiana de Rosnay, Manderley Forever: A Biography of Daphne du Maurier (Macmillan, 2017)

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo’s first novel Une éducation libertine won him the 2008 Goncourt du premier roman, and was shortlisted for both the Goncourt des lycéens and the Goncourt Prize. After a fellowship at the Villa Medici, he went on to write Pornographia, which was awarded the Prix Sade 2013. His latest novel, Animalia won the Prix du Livre Inter 2017 and is published this year in English by Fitzcarraldo, in a translation by Frank Wynne. Del Amo is also a vegan and a member of the association L214 which stands against animal mistreatments and slaughterhouses.

https://fitzcarraldoeditions.com/authors/jean-baptiste-del-amo
http://www.gallimard.fr/Contributeurs/Jean-Baptiste-Del-Amo

Related / Latest Publication:

Jean-Baptiste Del Amo, Animalia (Fitzcarraldo Editions, 2019)

Leonardo Da Vinci

Leonardo Da Vinci was born in 1452 in Tuscany and died in 1519 in France, 600 years ago this year. In 1516, François Ier invited him in France to live at the Clos-Lucé, a manor house near the royal Château d’Amboise. There, Leonardo Da Vinci worked until his death in 1519 on a gigantic collection of paintings, theoretic writings and drawings, intertwining scientific research, mechanics and fine arts.

Related / Latest Publication:

Doulce Mémoire, Léonard de Vinci, la musique secrète (Alpha Classic, 2019)

Jonathan Coe

Jonathan Coe is an English novelist, and one of France’s favourite English-language writers in translation – partly because of the underlying preoccupation of his work with political issues and social satire. His fourth novel What a Carve Up! won the John Llewellyn Rhys Prize and the Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger in France, just 25 years ago this year, and The House of Sleep won the French Prix Médicis. After Number 11, translated into French as Numero 11: Quelques Contes sur la folie des temps, Jonathan Coe’s latest book is Middle England, a state-of-the-nation novel turning back on the 2010 coalition government, the subsequent 2011 riots, the 2012 Olympics, all the way to the Brexit referendum. Middle England follows on from The Closed Circle (2004), the sequel of The Rotters’ Club (2001).

http://www.jonathancoewriter.com/

Related / Latest Publications:

	Jonathan Coe, Middle England (Viking, 2018)
	Jonathan Coe, Testament à l’anglaise (Gallimard, 1995)

Mathieu Boogaerts

Mathieu Boogaerts is a French singer and songwriter, who made his debuts as a classical musician (as a pianist and organ player). Abandoning his studies in order to travel throughout Africa, he picked up many different instrumental traditions during his journeys - materials he would use later in his first albums. Signing with Remark Records in 1995 kicked off his career. He then signed with Tôt ou tard in 2000 and continued touring in Asia, Europe and Africa. He collaborated with Luce, composed the soundtracks for Arnaud Viard's Arnaud fait son deuxième film. So far, he has composed seven albums.

https://mathieuboogaerts.com/

Adélaïde Bon

Adelaide Bon is a French writer, actress and voice artist born in 1981. A graduate of the Ecole Superieure d'Art Dramatique in Paris, she has an acting career in theatre and television, and works on issues of gender equality with the European Association Against Violence Against Women and Memoire Traumatique. She lives in Paris. The Little Girl on the Ice Floe is her first book, translated by Ruth Diver and published by MacLehose Press in the UK.

https://www.grasset.fr/adelaide-bon
https://www.maclehosepress.com/authors/adelaidebon

Related / Latest Publication:

Adélaïde Bon, The Little Girl on the Ice Floe (Quercus Books, 2019)

Joanna Biggs

London-born Joanna Biggs is a writer and editor at the London Review of Books, where she has written about Sylvia Plath, abortion in Northern Ireland, food banks and clothes, among other things. She read English and French at St Peter's College, Oxford and Queen Mary, University of London, and spent a short time at La Sorbonne. She has also written for the New Yorker, Harper's, the Financial Times and the Guardian. Her first book All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain at Work was published in 2015 – it explores the diversity of jobs across the UK, from footballers to shoemakers, and the way one’s work shapes one’s identity. With Sarah Shin and Alice Spawls, she founded the feminist publisher Silver Press in 2017, which has brought books by Leonora Carrington, Audre Lorde, Nell Dunn and Chantal Akerman back into print.

https://serpentstail.com/joanna-biggs.html

Related / Latest Publication:

Joanna Biggs, All Day Long: A Portrait of Britain At Work (Serpent’s Tail, 2016)

Simone de Beauvoir

Simone de Beauvoir was born in 1908 in Paris. Her feminist and existentialist essay The Second Sex, first published 70 years ago in 1949, brought her to be considered as a pioneer of feminism in France and worldwide. She went on to write a number of essays, novels, and autobiographic narratives, including The Mandarins, winner of the 1954 Goncourt Prize.

Related / Latest Publication:

Simone de Beauvoir, The Second Sex (Vintage Classics, 2015)