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This year the Festival America returns to Vincennes from 22 to 25 September for its tenth edition. Around debates, meetings and round tables, many topics will be discussed, which affect the whole of society but above all North American literature.
Every two years, the large city of Val-de-Marne usually organizes this festival. Unfortunately, due to the health emergency, the 2020 edition and then the 2021 edition had been canceled. “We do not want to upset the spirit, and therefore we prefer to mobilize now to make the 2022 festival a real party that will celebrate the 20th anniversary of America and will mark the 530th anniversary of the arrival of Christopher Columbus in America and the meeting between Old and New World “, declared the organizers of the meeting.
The festival, run by volunteers, aims to help the public understand the literature and cultures of North America, including the Caribbean, Canada, Mexico and the United States through activities, films, documentaries, concerts and writing and translation workshops. . The meetings will take place at the Pompidou Center while the films will be screened at the Espace Soranot and the Autoditorium.
Created on 6 June 2001, the first edition of the Festival took place a year later, in 2002. The creator of the event is none other than Francis Geffard, bookseller of Vincennes and director of the American lands and Indian landss to Albin Michel. In 2012, the event brought together writers from 13 different countries. No fewer than 75 authors from 14 countries are expected this year. The topics dealt with will concern the living conditions of almost disappeared peoples or acculturation.
In recent years, a new family of writers has appeared within the North American literary landscape. They express their questions about peoples who wish to maintain their identity and heritage, while also responding to the challenges of the present. These authors offer powerful and inspired stories to transport their readers to an original and unprecedented universe.
For this tenth edition, but an existence of 20 years, many characters from music and cinema but above all from literature (novelists, short stories, poets and essayists) cry out revolt and indignation. They invoke resistance and affirm the right to diversity. Among them are Jonathan Franzen, Louise Erdrich, Richard Ford, Russel Banks, Joyce Maynard, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Emma Cline, Natasha Trethewey, Julie Otsuka, Viet Thanh Nguyen, Katherena Vermette, J. Courtney Sullivan and Guadalupe Nettel.
The America Festival highlights the Indians and Inuit who are gradually building a culture that naturally fits into the world while being the heirs of a tradition, a history, a memory that occupy a unique place in the heritage of humanity.
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