18-20 June 2010
Venue: Venues across Paris
English PEN is proud to announce that it will be sponsoring Shakespeare and Company's fourth literary festival, Politics and Storytelling, which will take place in Paris from June 18-20, 2010. In the spirit of Shakespeare and Company's fifty-year-independent bookshop, FestivalandCo is an international yet intimate event that is mostly free and open to all.
2010: Politics and Storytelling
Next year's theme will explore the way writers depict, transform and influence their political environment. What role does politics play in the novel? How much do politicans rely on invention and storytelling? Do writers have a political responsibility? How do censorship and ideology shape our culture? Authors from around the world will discuss these issues amongst others and look at the importance of literature in our present cultural climate.
Over the course of three days we will host readings, panel discussions, book signings and film screenings. Held in the park next to Shakespeare and Company opposite Notre Dame, the festival will attract authors, actors and spectators from around the world. There will also be special events in select venues across Paris such as Théâtre de l'Odéon, the École des Beaux-Arts and the Hôtel de Ville.
Visit www.festivalandco.com for further details.
FestivalandCo 2008
The 2008 festival, Real Lives: Exploring Memoir and Biography, attracted over 6000 people. The 35 participating authors included Paul Auster, Alain de Botton, Jung Chang, Rachel Cusk, A.C. Grayling, A.M. Homes, Siri Hustvedt, Hermione Lee, Catherine Millet, Amélie Nothomb, Marjane Satrapi, André Schiffrin and Jeanette Winterson. Charlotte Rampling and other actors also participated.
FestivalandCo 2008 was sponsored by The New York Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, English PEN, Eurostar, Roederer Champagne, Montblanc, the Mairie de Paris, the French Ministry of Culture, The British Council, The American Embassy and other associations.
Shakespeare and Company
Shakespeare and Company was opened by George Whitman in 1951. Over the years, writers such as Allen Ginsberg, William Burroughs, Henry Miller, Anaïs Nin, Richard Wright, Lawrence Durrell, James Baldwin, and Lawrence Ferlinghetti have written, given readings and even lived at the shop. Now 95 years old, George has received the Officier des Arts et Lettres from the French Government for his long-running contribution to Parisian literary history. His daughter, Sylvia Whitman, now runs the institution and founded FestivalandCo in 2003.
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