Lettres Proches
Literary Project
Initiated for the Night of ideas 2021, this editorial project
wants to bring together through a collection of letters different authors from around the world with a common theme: being close. This theme has been chosen with the idea of questioning the renewal of our individual and collective relationship to space, which more than ever shapes our relationship to the world.
Alliance Française Bahrain invites each AF to question the evolution of our contemporary modes of sociality, and more than ever our relationship with others. Literature has always been a powerful tool for the transmission of ideas. Today we wanted to use this medium to allow authors from different continents to express their views on a common subject. Enjoy!
Les lettres
Alliance Française Quérétaro
Guilhem luycx
Director of the "Planta de Sandía" Project; graduate in Literary Studies. Author of Porcelana de Menta (2019), Nos acordaremos algún día (2020), Plural (2020) and other works published by Revista El Humo, Fenómeno, Periódico El Universal Querétaro, Enpoli, Revista Enchiridion, Caleidoscopio and Revista217.
READ HIS LETTER
Alliance Française Lusaka
MARITA BANDA
Marita Banda is a young Zambian author and poetess in her thirties. She works in the private sector, teaches and offers workshops in creative writing and interculturality. As a fiction and non-fiction editor, Marita has written Telling It Like It Is which is a collection of poems in English, French, and Tumbuka; as well as the Traditional Zambian Etiquette for Modern Living series.
READ HER LETTER
Alliance Française Singapour
OVIDIA YU
Ovidia Yu was born in, lives in and writes about Singapore. She spent her schooldays in the science stream and it was only after she found herself in medical school that she became aware she didn’t want to spend her life as a doctor.
It was after dropping out of college that Ovidia entered her first writing competition. Her short story ‘A Dream Of China’ won first prize in the Asiaweek short story competition that year. Although she had been writing her own stories almost as long as she had been reading, it was only then that she dared to think about becoming a writer. Winning the competition meant a lot because until then, the only people who had read her stories were friends and family.
READ HER LETTER
Alliance Française Tunis
ZINELABIDINE BENAÏSSA
Zinelabidine Benaïssa was born in 1956 in the heart of the medina of Tunis. He is a professor of linguistics and medieval literature at the Faculty of Letters, Arts and Humanities of Manouba (Tunisia). Specialist in children's literature and non-formal education, radio host, passionate about theatre and birds, he writes fictional stories but in a very real setting: his beloved Tunisia. He has some fifteen short stories and children's novels to his credit, including: Les Mystères du Belvédère and Le Fantôme de Sébastian works for the French classes in Tunisian schools.
Zinelabidine Benaïssa's last novel will be published in March 2021 under the title Sherlock Holmes in Tunis.
Alliance Française Bahrain
Jumana al qassab
A Bahraini writer born in 1995. Graduated with BA in Graphic Arts and Design. Participation in many cultural events. She was chosen among 50 Arab writers on the occasion of Sharjah's celebration of being the Book Capital 2019 within an anthology (how many Lung for the Coast). She won a number of local and regional awards, like: first place in the Sheikh Khalid bin Hamad award for young Gulf novelists, first place in the Sheikha Latifa Al Maktoum Award for the short story branch, first place in the Ministry of Education competition for the short story branch, second place in the Ministry of Education Competition Education, eloquent poetry, was awarded the Best Actress in a Second Role at the First Bahrain Theatre Festival.
Publications: the novel, “Beasts Never Die”, and postcards in cooperation with Syed Muhammad Al Majid under the title “Steps to Get Rid of sorrow”
Alliance Française Dublin
Paul lynch
Paul Lynch is the internationally acclaimed author of four novels — Beyond the Sea, Grace, The Black Snow and Red Sky in Morning. He has won the 2018 Kerry Group Irish Novel of the Year, the 2020 Francophonie Ireland Ambassadors’ Award, and France’s booksellers’ prize, Prix Libr’à Nous for Best Foreign Novel. He has been shortlisted for many international awards, including the UK’s Walter Scott Prize, the William Saroyan International Prize in the US and France’s Prix du Meilleur Livre Étranger, Prix Littérature-Monde, and the Jean Monnet Prize for European Literature. He lives in Dublin with his wife and two children.
Alliance Française Karachi
Bina shah
Bina Shah is a Karachi-based author of five novels and two collections
of short stories, including a feminist dystopia called Before She Sleeps, published in 2018.
Her work has appeared in The New York Times and Pakistan’s biggest English-language newspaper, Dawn; the literary journal Granta; and
other international newspapers and journals.
In September 2020 Shah was awarded the rank of Chevalier in the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres for her work in the fields of literature, women's empowerment and the promotion of the French language and culture in Pakistan.
Alliance Française Arabie Saoudite
SANA DAHMANI
Former student of the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Tunis, Sana DAHMANI received her PHD in French and comparative literature. After being teacher-researcher for ten years in tunisian universities, she’s now Assistant professor at Princess Noura University where she teaches literature, French as a foreign language and translation. She published several papers around exile literature, commited literature and feminine literature. She has also coordinated the preparation of several international congresses and symposia.
Alliance Française Kuala Lumpur
BERNICE CHAULY
Bernice Chauly is the author of seven books of poetry and prose, including the award-winning memoir
Growing Up With Ghosts and the novel Once We Were There, set against the Malaysian Reformasi of 1998.
She directed the George Town Literary Festival for seven editions (2011-2018), founded PEN Malaysia, and has
taught creative writing for more than 20 years. She is currently writing a AAA video game.
