Vincennes: the America festival will not take place this year

There will be no America festival this year in Vincennes. The meeting of the literatures and cultures of North America which attracts nearly 40,000 visitors every two years was initially supposed to take place from September 24 to 27, 2020. Due to the health crisis, this edition is postponed to the year next. From September 23 to 26, 2021, it will therefore welcome the same guests gathered around the theme “Voices of America”.

“We didn’t want to cancel the event, but we also remained realistic,” explains Francis Geffard, president of the Festival America association. It was undesirable to ask people to come to the other side of the Atlantic, to expose themselves to quarantine on their return, just like welcoming thousands of enthusiasts to Vincennes under satisfactory conditions. of literature ”.

From last March, the festival team, made up entirely of volunteers, and supported by some 300 volunteers in the field, therefore wanted to protect everyone and “limit damage” to protect the event without endangering it. its resources.

A transparent budget

“It’s a big, fragile machine,” continues Francis Geffard. Fortunately, we are supported. The decision was taken in agreement with the city of Vincennes, which is above all the city that hosts the festival and provides us with its various places to host the meetings. She is also one of the contributors to the festival, such as the Department, the Region, the Ministry of Culture via the Drac and the national book center, the Sofia (French Society for the interests of authors of writing) and the governments of countries of the authors, the United States, Canada, Quebec, Mexico, Haiti, with different degrees of participation ”.

The association can therefore face this postponement, and its future, thanks to the subsidies that have or will be paid. “Our budget is € 450,000,” says the festival director. A third is devoted to bringing people from afar and welcoming them; a third is dedicated to the rental of essential structures, such as sound, lighting and recording control rooms, even if the Vincennes teams participate. And the last third is used for communication, website management, catalogs, invitations, press service ”.

Women will give voice

“The decision to postpone the festival was welcomed by all the authors,” assures Francis Geffard. And all have given their agreement to be present in 2021 ”. About sixty authors are expected; a choir which will therefore be able to give “Voice”, since this is the theme of the 2021 edition.

“Our guests are socially committed for some, ecologically for others. We will see and hear from these people who have won their rights and their place in North American society through struggle; writers belonging to minorities, such as twelve Amerindian authors, twice as many Hispanic, Asian, migrant authors; still others belonging to the LGBT + community and then a lot of women ”.

Among them, one will not miss Joyce Carol Oates (United States) at the same time poet, novelist, short story writer, playwright and essayist, and great figure of the rights of the woman, author of the novel “A book of American martyrs”, or still Tayari Jones and “An American wedding”, André Aciman, American author of Italian-Turkish origin author of “Call me by your name”, Armistead Maupin, author of the “Chronicles of San Francisco” or Tommy Orange, American writer arapaho and cheyenne who, with her novel “There There” was one of the finalists for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, winning the American Book Award in 2019.

“Women and men who question our humanity in their books,” concludes Francis Geffard, who also specifies that lovers of literature will return to the festival the following year, in September 2022. A date which will mark the twentieth anniversary of the event.