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, 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. 

This event will be hybrid. While Gaël Octavia will appear in-person at the Library, Marie-Célie Agnant and Danielle Legros Georges will remotely join from Quebec and Boston, respectively. A live remote viewing will be held at the Brooklyn Center for Fiction and the San Francisco Center for the Art of Translation. 

About the speakers:

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.

Danielle Legros Georges is the author of The Dear Remote Nearness of You and translator of Island Heart, a collection of poems written by 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 of creative writing at Lesley University.

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. 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). In 2023, she was appointed Canada’s 10th Parliamentary Poet Laureate.

About the International Library series: 

This conversation is part of the International Library, a new series launched in collaboration with the Center for Fiction in Brooklyn and the Center for the Art of Translation in San Francisco 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.

Important information: The discussion will be available both online and in person. While Octavia will appear in-person in the Reading Room, other participants will appear over Zoom. The Library will stream the conversation on Zoom for a live viewing experience. Both in-person and online attendees will be able to pose questions.

Attendance at this event constitutes permission for your photograph or video to be taken at the event and used by the American Library in Paris for marketing, promotional, pedagogical, or other purposes.