In this week’s roundup of world literary news, our team members fill us in on France’s literary awards season and exciting festivals in Greece and the United States. From the race for the Prix Goncourt to feminist literature in Athens, read on to find out more!
Kathryn Raver, Assistant Managing Editor, reporting from France
As the leaves begin to shift their colors, France’s literary scene is shifting into awards season. Last week, Jean-Pierre Montal took home the Prix des Deux Magots for his novel La Face nord, the Prix Medicis announced their 2024 shortlist, and the contenders for the prestigious Prix Femina are to be revealed in just a few weeks. That’s only to name a few!
Perhaps the most esteemed French literary prize, however, is the Prix Goncourt, and the time for its conferral is fast approaching. Awarded annually in November, the Prix Goncourt is bestowed by the Académie Goncourt upon “the best and most imaginative prose work of the year.” They also give separate awards for poetry (conferred this year to Haitian poet Louis-Philippe Dalembert), biography, and a large variety of international works, among others.
On October 1st, the Académie released this year’s Prix Goncourt shortlist. Amongst the eight contending authors, who come from all manner of Francophone backgrounds, is past Asymptote contributor Abdellah Taïa’s Le Bastion des larmes. Last year’s winner was Jean-Baptiste Andréa’s Veiller sur elle, a sweeping love story that follows a young sculptor and woman searching for freedom as they navigate early-20th century Italy. This year’s selections cover a range of intriguing narratives, from family dramas to life amid Algeria’s civil war, making for what is sure to be close race for the prize.
The winner of the 2024 Prix Goncourt will be announced on November 4th, so stay tuned!
Christina Chatzitheodorou, Editor-at-Large, reporting from Greece
This year the Athens Art Book Fair took place between October 4 to 6 in Stoa Tristrato in the centre of Athens. Taking place in a public space for the first time, the 5th edition of the book fair hosted over 150 publishers and artists from Greece and 35 countries abroad, including Italy, France, Albania, and North Macedonia. Visitors had the opportunity to explore a wide and diverse range of independent publishing practices: zines, fine art publications, photographic books, independent magazines, art monographs, poetry, research and critical discourse, among others.
Another festival took place last weekend: for the second consecutive year, the feminist collective Purple Medusas organized the interdisciplinary festival “Gender and Literature” at the Kypseli Municipal Market. The programme included several events, from discussions and workshops to theatre and a book exhibition. Among other things, there were events on feminist and queer Palestinian literature, a tribute to queer and female genealogies in the Balkans, a lesbian creative writing workshop, and much more. The organizers dedicated this year’s festival to “Our Palestinian Sisters”.
In other feminist book news, the book Grafo tin Eafti mou (I write my(fem)self) was recently published by the Red Marks editions. The book grew out of the feminist reading and writing seminars “I write myself”, and features various forms — including poems, prose, essays, short stories, associative and incoherent puns, and even incomplete sentences — from the workshop’s participants, along with excerpts from texts that inspired the authors.
Alan Mendoza Sosa, Editor-at-Large, reporting from the United States
October has been a feverish month for Hispanic literary communities in the U.S. Between October 8-12, New York City held its annual Feria Internacional del Libro de Nueva York. The event welcomed authors from all around the Hispanic world, who celebrated literature in a number of panels, book launches, roundtables, and poetry soireés. The theme for this year, which marks the sixth edition of the fair, was “New York, a point of encounter for Spanish and other languages.” The gem-studded lineup included Asymptote-affiliated writers such as Valeria Luiselli and Mariana Enríquez, as well as writers such as Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil and Jumko Ogata, both of whose work fights racism and linguistic discrimination. One of the most unique events was the presentation of the novel Acequia by Mexican writer Amaury Colmenares. He is the first winner of the Las Yubartas multinational literary award, an initiative between ten Spanish-language independent publishers. The accolade includes a cash prize and the simultaneous publication of the winning novel in Bolivia, Ecuador, Argentina, Peru, Colombia, Chile, Uruguay, Mexico, Spain, and the United States. This historic prize joins other U.S.-based awards for literature in Spanish, such as the Premio Aura Estrada and the International Latino Book Awards. They are contributing to an ever-more robust system of production, publication, and distribution of Spanish literature in the U.S.
In addition to the FILNYC, this month saw and will see two other big events celebrating literature in Spanish. The first one was the Columbus Hispanic Bookfair. Hosted by the Ohio Association of Hispanophone Writers, the event took place on October 12, and highlighted the growing number of Spanish voices in Ohio. The other event will run between October 26 and November 2 in Chicago. It is the annual Lit & Luz festival, a bi-national gathering of writers, poets, and artists from the U.S. and Mexico, whose work explores the intersections between text, sound art, and visual creation. Previous participants have included Asymptote contributors, such as the Mexican poet Rocío Cerón and the translator Rachel Galvin. This year’s lineup also includes the translator Irma Pineda, alongside several new voices from Mexico and Chicago.
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