Literature Projects and Book Fairs

This blog has been too silent for quite some time... but if you follow me on twitter, you may have seen that I'm still active. Next to my daily job focusing on cultural relations through arts and education, I have been concentrating a lot on my literature projects.

I have finalized my short story collection in French and have managed to send it - the old-fashioned way, by post! - to a dozen Francophone publishers in Belgium and in France last week. Those of you who have been reading my short stories online (and I thank you for that) may have seen that I have deleted all my online publications recently. The reason is that I have made a lot of editing to these stories and have presented them differently in the form of a collection I called Mouvements (Movements). I am still exploring ways to publish the whole collection in a digital format. More soon...

I have also been focusing on some translation work from three very different authors and languages, two of which are now in the hands of their authors' literary agents.

While waiting for some answers from these various publishers, I have started some research on different projects focusing on contemporary Turkish Literature by women writers and on Turkish History. I hope to tell you more about these when it takes a more concrete shape.

On the more concrete side of my literary life, I will visit the Brussels Book Fair on Saturday 6 March, and the London Book Fair next month and will definitely do some posting about the different events I am planning to attend. These will include discussions about online publishing and writing in the digital space.

To be continued...

Literary Boston and New York

I've been willing to write about my trip to Boston and New York City a while ago. It's been a month now that I'm back but it's not too late to share some great literary moments I had there.

Bookshop on the corner of Bleecker and 11th Street, New York City

First let me start with Boston, a city full of culture and history where I was to attend the Media in Transition conference at MIT. I've attended several panels on different topics.
The first panel was about Digital Classrooms and Digital Curricula, there's been very fruitful and necessary discussions about collaborative education and teacher training on new technologies. Students may be digital natives, but most of the teachers aren't. A clear emphasis on knowing rather than knowledge (don't think knowledge is only in your brain) has been put forward so to go towards a more participatory culture. "Classrooms don't have walls anymore" was one of the messages about the possibilities given by new media & technologies to use in education. The second panel I've been to was Race, Nationality and the Digital Technologies with 4 very interesting papers that I would suggest you have a look if interested in the topic. The use of the internet has been analysed from Black communities in the USA to Aboriginal communities in Canada. One paper has also presented how hate speech, which was mostly spread through underground media (flyers, meetings...) in the recent past, has been reaching a much wider audience, expanding globally, being very active on social networking and in the cyberspace. The Databases, Encyclopedias, Archives panel has been focusing a lot on history, on digital approaches to history, and on the evolution of the encyclopedia and the emergence of wikipedia. The last panel I've been to was Fiction and Media Change. Since the last few months, I've been more and more interested in the emergence of a "new" literature, with authors not afraid of using new technologies in their narratives, or even to write for different types of media than the printed book (the Penguin project "We Tell Stories" is one great example of the possibilities offered by new media to tell stories). These various possibilities haven't been really discussed in the panel, staying more focused on literary theory and other comparisons between the novel and the cinema for example. There is thus still a lot more to share and to explore, so do have a look at the titles of the papers, most of them available online (see the list and links at the end of this post). After MIT, a visit to Harvard was of course compulsory, and so to the wonderful bookstores all around Cambridge. The Boston Public Library was stunning, and the lovely Boston Athanaeum has been a great discovery.

Boston Public Library

New York has also its load of culture and literature. It's the fourth time I went to New York and never really took the opportunity to enter the Public Library, which I did this time and couldn't understand why I didn't put such a great place in my list together with the MET, MOMA and other landmarks (seeing it from outside is not enough). I've been quite moved seeing the Gutenberg Bible.

One of the 48 copies of the Gutenberg Bible, New York Public Library

And last but not least, I could enjoy the PEN World Voices Festival in New York, which I wanted to go to for such a long time. I've had the chance to meet and listen to authors I really like, among them Laila Lalami, Neil Gaiman and Shaun Tan. I've also discovered many wonderful authors, and I had to come to New York to discover a Dutch author of children book from Amsterdam, Marieken Jongman. I told her I would attend events she will be in when back in Amsterdam.

Neil Gaiman, Marieken Jongman and Shaun Tan at the PEN Voices

And here are the signed books, Hope and Other Dangerous Pursuits by Laila Lalami and Tales from Outer Suburbia by Shaun Tan, both wonderful books:

You can read all the papers of the panelists on the MIT6 website. Here are the panels I've referred to above:
Digital Classrooms and Digital Curricula

Jami Carlacio, Lance Heidig, Teaching Digital Literacy Digitally Julio Gonzalez-Appling, Technology as a Bridge in the 21st-Century Classroom Bernadette Longo, Using Social Networks and Mobile Technologies to Enhance the Classroom Space Alice Robison, New Media Literacies by Design: The Game School
Race, Nationality and Digital Technologies
John Edward Campbell, From Barbershop to BlackPlanet: The Construction of Hush Harbors in Cyberspace
Kate Hennessy, Repatriation, Digital Cultural Heritage, and the (Re)Production of Meaning in a Canadian Aboriginal Community
Adam Klein, A Space for Hate: The White Power Movement’s Adaptation in Cyberspace
Nancy van Leuven, The New Mediated Environment of American Indians
Databases, Encyclopedias, Archives
Paul Arthur, History in Motion: Digital Approaches to the Past
Erinc Salor, Encyclopedic Endeavor and the Internet
Peter Walsh, The Uses of Catastrophe: Ninveh, Layard, and the Future of Knowledge
Fiction and Media Change
Jonathan Butler, Novel Obligations: The Future of Fiction in the Digital Age
Staffan Ericson, Death at Broadcasting House
Joanne McNeil, New Media in Fiction: Why the Novel’s Protagonist Never Plays with his iPhone
Annika Olsson, Narratives of Literature in Print and Cyberspace

Books & Brussels

One of my favorite activities when in Brussels is to wander in bookstores. Not that there are none in Amsterdam (there are plenty and very high quality bookstores like Athenaeum Boekhandel), it's just that I miss being surrounded by books written in French when I enter a bookstore. Athenaeum has a fairly good section of French speaking books and I can always order online. But I still love going to a bookstore, seeing what's new, discovering some jewel of a book chosen by the employees that month, or just touching the hard and paper back covers, opening and going through the pages. So last week I've been to Tropismes for the wide choice of fiction, theatre and poetry, to Brüsel for the graphic novels and comic books but also the very nice gallery, and although impersonal and too big I've been to FNAC (avoid the place on Saturday!) because of the wide space. Here are some titles I've bought during my visits:

"Entre les murs" by François Bégaudeau (you will certainly know the adaptation to cinema from Laurent Cantet: "The Class"), "De cendres et de fumées" by Philippe Blasband and "Pyongyang" by Quebecois graphic novelist Guy Delisle. Other acquisitions are translated works: "Le Dieu Manchot" by José Saramago, "Le voyage dans le passé" by Stefan Zweig and two mangas: "The Outsider" by Gou Tanaber and"Le Champ de l'arc-en-ciel/Nijigahara Holograph" by Inio Asano.

My hunger for books has been satiated during my stay in Brussels. The Brussels Book Fair began when I was still there! I've spoken to some authors, discovered new publishing houses, listened to Enki Bilal talk about his new work ANIMAL'Z , lied to Joseph Joffo about willing to buy one of his books but claiming I needed to go to the ATM (I have read "A Bag of Marbles" in high school and didn't want to buy old fashioned editions of his books - but there's no excuse, I feel bad, I shouldn't lie!), discovered the work of Karin Tuil during her talk and listened to interviews of authors on the radio on my way back home to Amsterdam, a bag full of publisher catalogs, promotional bookmarks and books on the passenger seat.

Love story between a Fairy and a Wizard

Author Laurel Snyder asked of the blogosphere, "What is your favorite book from childhood?", and following Amy Guth's post on her blog I am now telling you about one of my favorite childhood books: L'Enchanteur by René Barjavel. I think I must have read that book four times. It was one of our French class reading assignment and it luckily came in during my I'm-crazy-about-Arthurian-legend period. I would definitely suggest it to anyone who reads French (I'm afraid it has never been translated into English, please correct me if I'm wrong).

Written in 1984, L'Enchanteur could be seen as yet another novel based on the Arthurian legend, but Barjavel manages to make much more of it. He freely transforms the story into a romance: one between Merlin the Wizard (L'Enchanteur) and the Lady of the Lake Vivian. I still vividly remember the tenderness that links both characters (I can still hear Viviane's soft voice in my head). The main theme remains of course the quest for the Graal, and many other well known heroes appear in the novel: King Arthur, Perceval, Queen Guenièvre and Lancelot, whose love story is also quite powerful in Barjavel's narrative. The author plays a lot with conventions through voluntary anacronysms as well, introducing for instance tin cans and an electric chimney into the medieval story. Nevertheless, the main theme of this magical novel remains LOVE. The love story between kings and queens, knights and queens, between Vivian and Merlin, the Fairy who could see the human in the Wizard.

Photo: Cover of the Paperback edition - Collection FOLIO

An Ode to Women

After her internationally acclaimed The Bastard of Istanbul, Elif Shafak is back in the book shelves since the end of November 2007 with a new work in Turkish: Siyah Süt. It has not been translated yet but I am sure it will in a short while. And if no editor has already thought about publishing an English or French version, I can hereby state that I am very much open to work on it in French.

Siyah Süt -Turkish for "Black Milk"- is Shafak's first autobiographical novel, as clearly stated on the cover (see right side bottom). It subtitle says: "Yeni baslayanlar için Postpartum depresyon" -Postpartum depression for beginners. At first view, it wasn't a book for me I thought. I am not a mother and I have no wish to be one, even though I stay open to change my current vision on my life is baby-less. But then I really like Elif Shafak's work, especially her English written novels The Saint of Incipient Insanities and The Bastard of Istanbul - I have to be honest, I have difficulty reading the language she uses in her Turkish novels. I wanted to know more about this writer, because I was sure, no matter what, that she was going to tell her readers about her writing and not about her baby splitting on her nightgown only. And I have been impressed, even more than expected. Black Milk is a brilliant work. During 200 pages and even more, Shafak specifically writes about herself and the many voices inside of her before her pregnancy, enabling her readers to really understand the postnatal depression she went through. Inviting her readers to reflection, Shafak tells about her fears, her wishes, her doubts and moves to the wider theme of being a woman in society. She describes women writer's lives and vision on motherhood and feminism, making parallels with her own states of mind. She gives voice to the different women within her, and talks to herself through these six different characters throughout her story. Artist Latif Demirci's drawings also add another dimension to her storytelling, allowing an outside eye to draw the author's experience.

Shafak thought that she could never write again, but she intelligently and movingly transforms her black-turned maternity milk into ink. However, she wants this ink to be ephemeral as she tells her readers right from the beginning that this book has been written so it could be forgotten as soon as it has been read. "Suya yazi yazar gibi..." - as if you would write on water.
I don't know if it had been designed on purpose, but the ink of the title on the cover of my book has vanished after I read the novel... No matter what, I will not forget this book because for me, it is above all an ode to women.

Elif Safak
Siyah Süt
Dogan Kitapçilik
303 pages
Published November 2007 in Turkish

Images Moving

I have been deeply moved by a work of art a few minutes ago. A book of drawings, images talking to me without using a single printed word, except for its title: The Arrival, and the name of its author: Shaun Tan. One artist to discover for certain. The Arrival has won the prize for best comic book of the year at the Angoûleme Comics Festival. One immigration story among billions one might say, so what makes Shaun Tan's story so original? Without spoiling your pleasure to discover the book by yourself, I will just tell you how I felt when I started to watch and read the images one frame after the other. The absence of written language just made me feel as lost as the central character of the story, I could follow and experience each one of his feelings: the arrival to the foreign land, the tasting of new food, the meeting with people, the search for a job, the loneliness... And the awkward need to belong. Frame after frame, I was trying to decipher each drawing as the character tried to decipher his new environment. I could write pages and pages about the technique Shaun Tan uses, comparing his work with other graphic novels... But I will not break the spell: I have been deeply moved by the story of a man who leaves his daughter and wife to search for a better life on an unknown land. Nothing new, same old story for hundreds of years. And I am still moved by the humanity in it, only this time was the feeling even stronger.

Photo: 'Four Seasons' Shaun Tan, pencil on paper