Festival of New French Writing

The French and Francophone authors coming to New York to take part in the Festival of New French Writing are among the best known writing in the French language today. They form no school, they subscribe to no single esthetic but they all share a deep commitment to literature itself and a profound engagement with the world in which they live.

Their concerns are not alien to the American writers who have agreed to enter into conversations with their French counterparts. They, too, come from multiple cultural and intellectual traditions and, like their transatlantic colleagues, they view the world with anxiety.

The conversations between French and American authors, assisted by eminent New York-based American and French critics and journalists aim to present a view of the state of French writing today as well as contrasts with fiction and non-fiction writing in the United States, and an outlook on the future of literature.

		benjamin anastas Benjamin Anastas is the author of two novels, An Underachiever’s Diary and The Faithful Narrative of a Pastor’s Disappearance. As a critic and essayist he has written about a wide range of contemporary writers, from Philip Roth, John Updike and Muriel Spark to Michel Houellebecq, Etgar Keret and Michael Chabon. His journalism and travel writing have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Men’s Vogue, and The New York Times “T” Style Magazine, while his short fiction has been published in The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and GQ. He served as Executive Director of the Ledig House International Writers’ Residency in Ghent, New York and has taught fiction writing at Columbia University and Washington College in Chestertown, Maryland. back to top
		olivier barrot Olivier Barrot, a journalist, author, and television personality plays a prominent role in French cultural life. He hosts the daily literary television program "Un livre un jour" on the France 3 and TV 5 channels and directs the cultural magazine SENSO. He also teaches at Sciences-Po in Paris and at the University of Montréal. The most recent of his many books, L’Ami posthume, was just published by Grasset. For the past two years he has hosted a monthly literary program entitled “French Literature in the Making” at New York University. back to top
		tom bishop Tom Bishop is Florence Gould Professor of French Literature and Director of the Center for French Civilization and Culture at New York University. His books include From the Left Bank. Reflections on the Modern French Theater and Novel (New York University Press,1997), Passeur d’océan. Carnets d’un ami américain (Payot, 1989), and Pirandello and French Theater (New York University Press, 1960, 1970). Tom Bishop has written widely on contemporary French literature and cultural history and on the modern theater; he has focused on such major figures as Beckett, Sartre, and Robbe-Grillet. He organized several Beckett festivals, including the 2006 Paris centennial commemoration and a New York event for which he was awarded an OBIE. He was chair of NYU’s French department for 33 years. back to top
		violaine huisman As an editor at Seven Stories Press from 1999 to 2005, she established its foreign and subsidiary rights departments, and served as the English-language editor of the journal Autodafe with the International Parliament of Writers. Subsequently she represented foreign rights as well as international literary fiction and nonfiction for the Charlotte Sheedy Literary Agency. She currently works with FIAF as a literary programming consultant and is an executive board member of Dalkey Archive Press and Archipelago Books. Her translations have appeared in World Literature Today and The New York Times Magazine. She has just been appointed Humanities Manager at BAM. Paris-born Violaine Huisman lives in New York. back to top
		françoise mouly Françoise Mouly is the art editor of The New Yorker and co-founder of RAW magazine (along with her husband Art Spiegelman). She is an artist and designer, edited Covering The New Yorker (Abbeville Press, 2000), a collection of cover art to commemorate the magazine’s 75th anniversary and curated an exhibition of New Yorker covers for the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, MA in 2005. She has worked as a colorist for Marvel Comics and founded the RAW Junior division that publishes Little Lit, anthologies of comics for children. In 2008, she launched Toon Books, a series of hardcover comic books for children. back to top
		deborah treisman Deborah Treisman is the fiction editor at The New Yorker. She served as deputy fiction editor from 1997 to 2002, and has been a member of the editorial staff at Grand Street (managing editor), The New York Review of Books, Harper’s, and The Threepenny Review. She translated Vincent Kaufmann’s Post Scripts: The Writer’s Workshop from the French (Harvard University Press, 1994); and short translations have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation, Harper's and Grand Street. back to top
		caroline weber Caroline Weber is an associate professor at Barnard College and a specialist in eighteenth-century French literature and culture, with particular emphasis on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution. She received her Ph.D. in French literature from Yale University in 1998 and has also taught at the University of Pennsylvania. She is the author of Queen of Fashion: What Marie-Antoinette Wore to the French Revolution (Henry Holt, 2006), and Terror and its Discontents: Suspect Words and the French Revolution (University of Minnesota Press, 2003). She has published articles on eighteenth-century authors such as Rousseau, Voltaire, and Diderot, and on contemporary thinkers like Lacan and Lyotard. Caroline Weber also writes for Vogue and The New York Times. back to top
		lila azam zanganeh Lila Azam Zanganeh was born in Paris to Iranian parents. She moved to the United States in 1998 to teach literature, cinema and Romance languages at Harvard University. Since 2002, she is a regular contributor to Le Monde and has been published in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, The Nation, The Paris Review, and La Repubblica. In 2006, she edited a collection of narrative essays on Iran. Her first book, Light of My Life, or How to Net the Incredible Happiness of an Extraordinary Writer, will be published in 2009. Lila is fluent in six languages and serves on the Board of Overseers of the International Rescue Committee. back to top