Laurel Zuckerman's Paris Weblog

WICE’s Paris Writers Workshop Returns for a Weekend of Fun and Inspiration

Dimitri Keramitas has been the director of the Paris Writers Workshop for the past five years, as well as the director of the creative writing program at WICE. He speaks to us about this year’s edition of the workshop. (for more information please see the WICE website)

a Paris Writers News interview

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PWN: What is special or new about this year’s Paris Writer’s Workshop ?

DK: First, it’s not the “full-fledged” PWW, which is every two years, the next one taking place in 2022. This year we’re having an off-year event called the PWW Writing Weekend.

So it’s a smaller event?

Compared to the regular PWW, yes. However, it’s actually more than a weekend. It runs 4 days, Friday to Monday, June 25 - 28. Also, we’ve expanded the program since the first Writing Weekend. There are two master classes instead of one. Three one-hour writing-craft talks instead of two.

Will it be an on-line event?

Yes. I realize some people may be “Zoomed out”.  And Paris is slowly returning to normal, with more people getting vaccinated, restrictions being relaxed. But we can’t make rash

predictions so the event will still be virtual. After more than a year of virtual events, we

know how to do it reasonably well, and the public knows what to expect. We do hope to go

“live” next year. And there are tentative plans to wind things up with a “live” reading and outdoor reception if things go well.

And in terms of the content? Any particular themes?

The master classes are about new beginnings, which is appropriate for our period. Samantha Chang looks at beginning the novel, on a technical level. What is the best way to open the

story, to hook the reader. Should it be linear, or jump in the middle? The right start should lead organically to what comes next, and carry us along for a few hundred pages!

And Nicola Keegan focuses on the creative and motivational aspects, stimulating your imagination, finding your voice. Plus getting out of your rut if you’re in one, breaking free of writers block. All of us who write have experienced this and it can be pretty dire if you’re dealing with it alone. If Samantha focuses on the first words on the page (or in the file), Nicola looks at what comes before those words: the writer’s mindset.

The talks seem very different from each other. Is there any common thread there?

We didn’t think of that when we were putting them together. But looking at them now, they all deal with bridging gaps of one kind or another. Our poets, Jennifer K. Dick and Geoffrey Nutter, look at collage and other techniques for bridging the gaps between cultures and languages. Alecia McKenzie speaks about settings that transcend borders in fiction. And creative nonfiction specialist Lise Funderburg covers something different, more technical: bridging fiction and nonfiction. When to do so—and when not to.

The emphasis seems more on and/and than either/or—though not always.

Well, our instructors are teachers in distinguished institutions—Iowa, NYU, Rutgers. But they’re also veteran writers. So I don’t think they’re bound by theory. I’d say the emphasis is very hands on. The same is true of the panel.

What’s this year’s topic?

Navigating the Small Presses. We often use that “navigating” motif for the panels. Writers have lots of challenges finding their way in the publishing world, which is increasingly diverse, not to say confusing. The panel is focusing on small houses, not really alternative publishing, which we’ve dealt with before. But there’s a lot of diversity in smell press publishing. We’ll be dealing with it from every angle: we’re featuring authors, publishers, agents, journal editors. It’s pretty comprehensive.

Has it been difficult organizing the PWW this year?

It’s a bit peculiar, in view of the pandemic and lockdowns. On one hand, we’ve gotten used to the situation, and have been able to handle things skilfully, if I say so myself. But like everyone we’re tired of the “old new normal”, and are eager to go back to the “old real normal”! The great thing is we’ve learned to be flexible and collegial. On the whole it’s been enjoyable.

Is there anything you want to say on the practical side of the event?

Well, interested persons can go to the WICE site (www.wice-paris.org) for details. If they want to register, our on-line system is very user-friendly. If you have a specific question you can write to me at [email protected]. The entire package is 350 euros, which is pretty reasonable considering what’s on offer.

If you say so yourself.

I just said it!

Learn more about WICE at https://www.wice-paris.org

 

How did we get here? Where are we going?

Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right by Jane Mayer

 

America is heading for dark times. How did we get here? What can we do? In this new series of posts, we will look at some of the excellent books that tried to inform and warn us. And, as they are published, we will feature the books that offer ways forward. Number 1 on our list, Jane Mayer's Dark Money. 

 

 

A talk with author Dominique Godrèche about An Ecology of Consciousness

 

 

UNE ÉCOLOGIE DE LA CONSCIENCE

DOMINIQUE GODRÈCHE

 

 

In her new book, An Ecologie of Consciousness, French author Dominique Godrèche bridges cultures to explore the impact of meditative practices on mental health and society in a time of pandemic.

a Paris Writers News Interview

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PWN: What is Une Ecologie de la Conscience about?

Dominique Godrèche: The book is a philosophical, anthropological, existential road trip from India to Europe and the United States. A transcultural vision of contemporary societal, ecological issues about psychology, spirituality, with a global perspective. It starts in India, where I followed the Buddhist Vipassana meditation sessions with the Indian master Satya Narayan Goenka, then proceeds to Paris, where I opened the first consultation in France based on meditation, in the department for addictions of Professor Claude Olievenstein, during its experimental phase. It continues in the United States, at the Marc department of UCLA University (the mindfulness research department) where I researched on the use of mindfulness in an institutional context, and the adaptation of eastern philosophical practices to western societies. It relates to Native American culture, while at SAR in New Mexico, the School of American Research of Santa Fe, ( now School of Advanced Research) as an associate researcher during my PhD of anthropology. It describes how different cultures envision health in a broad perspective: individual, collective, societal.

 

What is mindfulness and why is it important?

Mindfulness is the adaptation of ancestral Buddhist meditation to western societies. It was introduced in the United states by doctor Kabat Zinn, who told me during our interview (for Buddha News), “meditation is a way to free oneself from suffering. I looked for a way to introduce this practice without identifying it as Buddhist, because the majority of people do not wish to become Buddhist. So I taught the essence of Dharma without the Buddha dharma, in order to transmit it without the Buddhist connotation.»

Mindfulness is important as it became a way of life today, because it provides peace, serenity, develops the attention, awareness of the present moment. And ultimately prevents violence, through non violent communication. It has replaced the teachings of Buddhist or Hindu meditation, as a secular modern tool to access inner calm and peace of mind, a non medical way to heal anxiety, without the consumption of pills. Because of its multiple usages, it has been adapted to multiple professional contexts –for therapy, but also business…As it helps focusing, and allows to become more efficient, by developing a better quality of attention.

Thus its success and expansion. Also, it is accessible, because it does not imply a religious or spiritual adhesion, and proposed as a simple mental exercise. I have been able to observe that in Los Angeles, in the huge amphitheater of UCLA: hundreds of people were receiving an initiation given by the Marc team in order to access a quick state of relaxation. That is what my book addresses: how sophisticated long term teachings from eastern cultures have been reduced to simple exercises, with no cultural background or philosophical connotation attached. The psychiatrist Dan Siegel, from UCLA, was telling me, “it is just a way of training a muscle”. And Robert Thurman, “Buddha was the first scientist; because Buddhism is a science. Thoughts are a driving force, so we must train our minds. It is neither religious, or dogmatic. But scientific”. A pragmatic approach developed in the United States; so much part of the life style that “mindfulness eating sessions” are advertised.

And with today’s technological addictions, the over use of iPhones and social networks, -Tik tok, Instagram- etc. we have entered a new era of virtual reality, time, and space: the meaning of time changed drastically with the intensive use of technology, a shelter for loneliness. It has replaced live communication, modified usual perceptions. So much that applications have set up time-limit reminders to avoid over usage, and maintain people in a “regular” time frame. In this context, mindfulness is a precious tool as a reminder of real time, versus “elastic” virtual time and spaces. And the “here and now” concept became a mental health help.

 

You've studied the culture and art of Indians of the American southwest for many years. Did this influence this book?

It did; the title, “an ecology of consciousness”, refers to environmental ecology, as much as personal, mental, emotional ecology. Those notions, inherent to Native American culture are reflected in the “Navajo way of beauty”, and its prayer “walking in beauty “ :

“In beauty I walk, with beauty before me I walk, with beauty behind me I walk, with beauty above me I walk, with beauty around me I walk…Today I will walk out, today everything negative will leave me. I will have a light body, nothing will hinder me. beauty all around me may I walk.”

This approach is illustrated in the Navajo sand painting, which addresses the way the body, the mind, and the universe are interrelated. A holistic concept based on harmony and balance: in the Navajo sand painting, the patient’s body is in contact with a painting drawn on the earth.

 

Harry Walters, a Navajo anthropologist, explains, “Hozho, the Navajo word, describes peace, harmony, balance. The word beauty is related to healing and balance, not to art, a word that does not exist in Navajo; when we say beauty, we mean religion, philosophy, health. For us, everything is related.”

 

I was able to observe this correlation between health and the earth in New Mexico, at the Santuario de Chimayo, a healing place where I was brought by Imogene, a Native American friend. There, I watched the people in search of a relief, a cure, applying the Santuario “healing” dirt on their arms, their legs...A special atmosphere; an experiential situation, where human needs, the earth, and faith meet in a church. This perception of the earth as a healing factor is shared by various Native cultures.

Native American art commonly relates to the concept of Mother Earth, the notion of harmony and balance between the human existence and the land, its health. It addresses the concepts of “life ways”, its philosophy. I felt this power of the land in New Mexico, its physical, mental, spiritual impact. And when I was told my feelings to Godfrey Reggio, -the Santa Fean film maker of the series “Qatsi”, ( the Hopi concept of balance)-, he answered, “it is because the earth here has a special power, and gives you strength. It is a source of energy”.

 

Do you have a personal meditation practice? If so, how did you get started?

I left for India at the age of 17, having studied Indian philosophy, music, and art. I was a great fan of the filmmaker Satyajit Ray, and discovered India through his films. And had the chance to meet him at his home in Calcutta, on my way to Rabindranath Tagore Art School, Shanti Niketan, that he had also attended. Over the years I traveled all over India, looking for spiritual ways and teachings, including yoga with Geeta, the daughter of B. K. S. Iyengar. During my travels, I met fascinating people: the niece of Aldous Huxley, Olivia, in Dharamsala, the American-Russian princess Zina Rachevsky. Both had become Buddhist nuns, and I stayed with Zina, at the Kopan monastery she had founded. I visited various ashrams, from the most utopian

–in Pondicherry (Sri Aurobindo)-, with its city Auroville, to the most traditional, like the one in Tiruvannamalai, where I walked the sacred mountain…I encountered incredible meditators, secluded since decades in the mountains of Rishikesh...Then a friend suggested I join Goenka’s sessions, though he did not know where to find them, as they were itinerant, with no headquarters, like today.

So I started to search for Goenka. His teachings took place in a different location every ten days, and he traveled constantly. But one day, in an airport near Bombay, I was chatting with a gentleman while waiting for my luggage: he asked me the reason of my visit to India. I told him I was looking for Goenka, he smiled, and answered, “I am Goenka ». This is how I attended my first Vipassana session with him soon after; I was 19. I describe this experience in the chapter

«Carnets de Vipassana», a diary of the session explaining the various techniques of meditation.

 

How did you research this book?

The book covers three periods and places: the first one in India, «Santana, a Vipassana diary”. The second, “Return to France, encounter with professor Claude Olievenstein». The third one in the United States, “mindfulness, a north American invention”, at UCLA, an analysis of the north American approach of Oriental meditative practices, and their adaptation to the American culture. It also refers to my research in Santa Fe, at the Navajo psychiatric department, among other internships. I published a comparative approach of French and American psychotherapy, an analysis of memory and time in the therapeutic process of both cultures, and among bicultural populations (Native American, Hispanic American). So the research covers Buddhist philosophy, American anthropology, French and American clinical psychology.

 

Why this book now? Did the pandemic play a role?

Indeed. The book started during the pandemic: my publisher wanted to launch a new edition of Santana (Albin Michel). And I had noticed how the techniques of self control, calm… were advertised online during that period in order to fight the anxiety of the lock down. Also the way the pandemic was reactivating, a “no future” atmosphere, a grim future, lacking dynamics, an absence of projections, addressing the difficulty of living in closed spaces, etc.…in that context, meditation, or philosophical practices, were advertised like well being techniques, gymnastic, with no philosophical connotations attached, but predominantly the sale of sport accessories, - clothes-, etc.…A very materialistic approach of ancestral spiritual technics transformed into commodities. So I decided to write a new book related to the time of the pandemic, and included Santana the Vipassana diary, with a philosophical vision of the lock down, and its impact on our minds in that situation of closure, since we were not allowed to go out, except one hour a day.

It addresses the transformation of spirituality in today’s era in the West. Stuck in the house, I wrote the first part of the book, linking the confinement of the pandemic to the philosophical confinement during a Vipassana session, where we could not go out for 10 days, and introduced my research in New Mexico, and UCLA. The book ends after the confinement, in the south of France, in “Beauty”. It follows different phases: total confinement, philosophical confinement, liberation. It addresses the issues of closure, health, the capacity to stay locked at home, and in ourselves. It questions the issues of inner and outer space, and how they interrelate in different cultures -Asian, European, American-. It ends during the post confinement, with the rediscovery of freedom, -like after a Vipassana session-, when we go back to «normal life», and nature…with a feeling of wonder. So it really followed the process of the confinement. The pandemic has opened new doors of consciousness: about health, our resilience, the relation between ourselves and the environment, survival in today’s world... emphasizing our relationship to the environment. To quote Allen Ginsberg, “Earth pollution identical with mind pollution, consciousness pollution identical with filthy sky”. Goenka used to say that meditation was a way of “cleaning one‘s mind”: an ecology of consciousness.

 

Who did you write 'Une Ecologie de la conscience' for? What are you hoping your readers get out of it?

Une écologie de la conscience is written for a wide category of readers, as it addresses philosophical, psychological, environmental, existential, spiritual issues, on a global scale; in India, in Europe, the United States…it is a story about a personal experience, but beyond: it questions collective contemporary anxieties and life-balance, to which everyone can relate. I see the book as a tool to reflect on health in a holistic sense: mental, emotional, societal…And the relation to the environment, the memory, the status of philosophical practices in the modern globalized world. How to deal with pain, dependency, post traumas, inter cultural relations, identity, time and space…It is conceived as a platform to engage into a debate on various topics, a starting point to address multiple aspects of our lives, -contemplative, or active-. It questions the way we inhabit this world, our ability to cope with extreme, or difficult situations. And how specific practices can lead to a harmonious state of consciousness; to ultimately create, -if not ”a better world”-, a better quality of life, and communication, on a day to day basis.

It also addresses a transcultural approach of health and consciousness, through the eyes of Native cultures, in Mexico, and New Mexico, related to my encounters with traditional medicine people, whose practices are intimately associated to the consciousness of nature and its role in our life balance. And how different times, places and cultures meet on this matter.

 

Is writing a form of meditation? What is your writing practice like?

Writing catalyzes a state of mental absorption. Not “meditation” per se, as meditation consists in emptying one’s mind from any thought. And writing requires a lot of thinking…But the process of mental absorption creates a state of concentration close to meditation, because of the focus needed; and in fine, puts you in a state of deep mental absorption. I write every day; stories for medias, a diary. Notes while walking, mentally; when in a cafe, or a garden, I imagine a story: watching someone, ideas come to my mind about life situations…Writing does not start when I physically write. I might want to write a story about someone by looking at the person talk, walk, or move, by the way she interacts with the space. The environment and the space I find my self in have a lot to do with my writing process and inspiration: in Venice, I constantly have ideas when walking, looking at the houses, the architecture, a square, a “campo”…the people gathering, the sounds of the canals. The space -geographical, architectural, with its sounds…is inspiring. The way people move in this space -narrow streets, endless bridges, small squares, gardens-… Creates a variety of silent and musical environments.

 

Which artists or writers inspire you?

J.M.G le Clezio, Antonin Artaud, André Breton, Paul Eluard, Marguerite Duras, René Guenon, Michel de Certeau, Vladimir Jankélévitch. Jorge Luis Borges, Octavio Paz, J. D Salinger, Henri Miller, Lawrence Durrell, Primo Levi, Fyodor Dostoievski... The artists Rothko, Yves Klein, Marc Chagall, Pablo Picasso, Anish Kapoor, sculptor George Jean Clos. Native American sculptors Roxanne Swentzell and Craig Goseyiun in New Mexico; conceptual artist Charlene Teters. Violinist Yehudi Menuhin, composer Philip Glass. Movie actor Benicio del Toro, whom I interviewed; film makers Carl Dreyer, Wim Wenders, Godfrey Reggio… And many others !

 

What books are you reading?

La maladie de la mort by Marguerite Duras, l’Extase matérielle by Le Clezio, Arcane 17 by André Breton, les Tarahumaras by Antonin Artaud, la Prise de Parole by Michel de Certeau, le Non Lieu by Marc Augé.

 

What are you working on now?

The Jerusalem Syndrome, a religious pathology I studied in Jerusalem with psychiatric, religious, and cultural experts, on which I published articles in Paris Match, Ca m’interesse, le Point among others. It questions the status of religion and faith nowadays, and the impact of religious architecture and sacred geography on the psyche. The book project addresses art, esthetics, history, beliefs, psychology, anthropology, and politics.

Une écologie de la conscience is related to faith and spiritual anxiety in the 70’, 80’, when people were searching for a new life style, in that societal, political era, of a “peace and love” trend originated in the united states, with a large adhesion to oriental disciplines, and the later creation of counter culture communities based on extra European philosophy (mostly Asian). In India, most of the westerners I met were Americans; I met the same groups later in the united states, in communities like the Naropa Institute in Boulder. “An ecology of consciousness” addresses this quest for non violence, for a peaceful mind, and the encounter between Asia and the United States.

This new project analyzes blind, desperate “faith”, the need to believe at any cost and how it can lead to addictive scenarios of violence. It takes place between Jerusalem and the West, addressing transcultural and interfaith interactions, and the role of the “here and now“ concept: real time, real space, versus an imaginary one. It questions life between fiction or reality, how one wins over the other, and the consequences. Ultimately, it interrogates the sense of identity: what does “being one self” mean in today’s society, and the choices people make to create their identity.

 

About the author

Dominique Godrèche is a writer, ethno psychologist, graduated from EHESS Paris, Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales de Paris, specialized in issues related to identity, art, faith and beliefs, in the Middle East, United States, Mexico, Europe. Awardee of Le Prix de la Villa Medicis hors les murs in Literature for her essays on contemporary Native American culture, she was the correspondent of Indian Country Today magazine for Europe, and is a contributor to French medias, including Libération, Paris Match, le Point, Le Monde Diplomatique, and We Demain. 

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émissions de radio/Radio

https://frequenceprotestante.com/events/pour-une-ecologie-de-la-conscience/ "ET MAINTENANT LA GRANDE TRANSITION"  FREQUENCE PROTESTANTE 

 

https://www.airzen.fr/dominique-godreche-pour-une-ecologie-de-la-conscience/ "L'INSTANT PRÉSENT"  AIR ZEN RADIO 

 

Une Ecologie de la Conscience

Publisher: TREDANIEL

Language: French

Pages: 223

Available at bookstores and online

FNAC

DECITRE

AMAZON

 

 

 

How Donald Trump attempted to overthrow American democracy: Testimony from the Hearings Day 4

 

 

Links:

Day 1 Hearings Jan 6 Committee https://youtu.be/UiL2inz487U

Day 2 Hearings Jan 6 Committee https://youtu.be/DtM9Itv6tj8?t=1195

Day 3 Hearings Jan 6 Committee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bnf4w6rocm8

Day 4 Hearings Jan 6 Committee https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5hgdGLdh8E&t=1023s

Paris Writers Workshop 2022: A Distinguished Faculty, A Unique Focus on Craft

After two years on-line because of the pandemic and lockdowns, the Paris Writers Workshop is back as a live event, at its usual venue, Forum 104 (104 rue Vaugirard, Paris). It will take place from June 26 to July 2.

This year’s Paris Writers Workshop features a distinguished faculty teaching several genres: novel, short story, creative nonfiction and poetry. The novel master class, taught by Lauren Groff; rapidly filled up. However, here are places remaining in the other master classes. In addition the workshop includes agent consultations, a panel discussion, and a faculty-student reading at the Red Wheelbarrow bookshop. The panel discussion and reading are open to the public, free of charge. For detailed information on the PWW, please visit www.wice-paris.org.

We asked the author-instructors of the classes that are still open to present what will make their master class unique.

Short Story: Alecia McKenzie

The short story class is being taught by Alecia McKenzie, an acclaimed author, journalist and artist. Her stories and first collection, Satellite City, have won Commonwealth prizes, as did her first novel Sweetheart. Sweetheart also won a French prize, the Prix Carbet des Lycéens, in translation.

The short story workshop will help aspiring and experienced writers shape and refine their fiction according to their own vision. The emphasis will be on originality in developing the various elements of a story - character, plot, setting, structure, style, etc. Participants will do in-class writing exercises and will be given immediate feedback, and we will have an added focus on publishing short stories and novellas in today’s market – with a discussion of literary magazines, anthologies, sites, competitions…

Poetry: Jennifer K. Dick:

Originally from Iowa, Jennifer Dick is a long-time French resident. She divides her time between Mulhouse, near the Swiss and German borders, and the Paris region. She is a poet and critic, as well as a professor and department head the University of Mulhouse. She has also recently incorporated an interest in visual art and linguistic diversity into her work

Most poetry workshops tend to take one of 2 approaches—reading over poems written before a workshop by participants and providing feedback or generating new poetry based on prompts during workshops. Both approaches are valuable and will be put to use during the 2022 PWW. But What I am most excited about is not only combining both of these general practices, but opening them to specific on site explorations of language (French-English and other depending on participants or eavesdropping), and of place, city, walking, reflecting on displacement and travel in person and on exploration in order to help each participant envisage their own future book project(s).

Creative Nonfiction: Jeffrey Greene

Jeffrey Greene’s writing has appeared numerous publications, including The New Yorker, Poetry, The Nation, Ploughshares, The Kenyon Review Online, Agni, and the anthologies Strangers in Paris, Intimacy, Nothing to Declare: A Guide to Flash Sequence, and Rewilding. He has published several books, and for many years was a faculty member at the American University in Paris. He currently works with the Pan-European MFA Program.

Despite the range of creative nonfiction subgenres, they all share techniques of narrative craft, many of which are drawn from fiction and poetry. Often the central element is the ability to create the self as character, a first-person narrator who becomes an engaging personality to lead the reader into the world of personal experiences and research. We will look at the narrative structure, description, characterization, dialogue, and tension in your writing, all key elements in making writing spirited and appealing. This workshop invites those of you who are new to creative nonfiction writing as well as writers who have taken workshops before and wish to continue developing skills in the discipline. Individual conferences will be scheduled.

 

• WU271 PWW Novel Master Class: The Anatomy of the Novel (session 1 of 5)
  27 Jun 2022 9:00 AM 
   
  In-person at Forum 104 – 104 rue Vaugirard, 75006 Paris
• WU273 PWW Poetry Master Class: Poetry: What Can Language Do? (session 1 of 5)
  27 Jun 2022 9:00 AM 
   
  In-person at Forum 104 – 104 rue Vaugirard, 75006 Paris
• WU272 PWW Short Story Master Class: Writing and Publishing the Short Story (session 1 of 5)
  27 Jun 2022 2:00 PM 
   
  In-person at Forum 104 – 104 rue Vaugirard, 75006 Paris
• WU274 PWW Creative Nonfiction Master Class: Creative Nonfiction Projects with Jeffrey Greene (session 1 of 5)
  27 Jun 2022 2:00 PM 
   
  In-person at Forum 104 – 104 rue Vaugirard, 75006 Paris

Interview with Lee Huebner, former publisher of the IHT, on the Fake News Panic

Lee W. Huebner is the former publisher and CEO of the International Herald Tribune newspaper and former special assistant to the President of the United States during the Nixon administration. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Harvard University. Huebner is the Airlie Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, where he teaches courses on journalism ethics, media and globalization, political speechwriting, and presidential communication. He is the author of “The Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: The Discovery of Propaganda and the Coercion of Consent.”  

A talk with Lee W. Huebner, former publisher of the International Herald Tribune newspaper, on his book “The Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: The Discovery of Propaganda and the Coercion of Consent.” 

A Paris Writers News Interview

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Paris Writers News (PWN): Why go back 100 years? What’s the significance of propaganda, fake news today and what happened a century ago?  

Lee W. Huebner (LWH) 

The concept of fake news goes back to the beginnings of time, and the fact that people have always lied to one another, starting with Adam and Eve. The book traces some of this history. 

At first, the word propaganda didn't have a pejorative sense. The word propaganda was after all, the name of the College of Propaganda for the Roman Catholic Church. Its mission was to propagate the faith, much as the ancient Roman farmers used to “propagate” their crops. So, it's a Latin word that suddenly took on a new meaning in the early 20th century.  

The word propaganda was eventually used to describe how people can be misled in a massive way through purposeful misinformation. But that didn’t really happen in a decisive way until the early 1900’s—and especially at the time of the First World War.  

In the early 20th century, Susan Langer, a very thoughtful philosopher, said that you only really see things once you have words for them. So once people started to notice what seemed to be propaganda, and had a name for it, they seemed to find it almost everywhere, heightening their suspicions and their distrust in public information. 

The book explores the reasons why this distrust suddenly exploded, and how “propaganda” became a popular catchword. If you didn’t like some information you encountered, you could simply say “Oh, that's just propaganda.” (Much as people today can say, “Oh, that's fake news!”)  And it really became an obsession, and even a panic, in some ways.  

Because of course, what it meant was that democracy wouldn't function the way people normally expected it to. The public was not the wise source of steady, wisdom. The voice of the people was not the voice of God, and suddenly people had to cope with that realization.  And what I found particularly interesting were some of the parallels with what's been happening recently. 

Lee Huebner in front of the International Herald Tribune headquarters in Paris (courtesy of Lee Huebner)

PWN Did education and literacy have something to do with it? Because around a century ago, as more and more people could read, there was a big boom in publishing from books to newspapers to magazines.  

LWH It was a big factor. Print suddenly exploded everywhere. High speed printing presses were modernized, paper was available much more cheaply, and the railroads and motor vehicles were there to send newspapers and magazines to readers all across the country, and to do so very quickly.  

And all of that had its impact. Two other factors contributed significantly to the new apprehensions. One was social, and one was psychological. The nature of social life was transformed. Woodrow Wilson called it “the de-localization” of American life. The fact that the intimate community, where people knew whom to trust, how to verify things, how to put their hands on the things that counted, all of this began to fade, and more and more it seemed as though more distant places were calling the shots. And that sense of fading local and community control was pretty profound. And with it, of course, came a lessened sense of personal identification with a strong and supportive community.  

One of my former professors, Robert Wiebe at Northwestern University, used to call this the “distension” of American life, mixing the word extension with the word distortion. And then at the same time, people became more and more concerned about the inherently irrational nature of human psychology. Sigmund Freud was among the many serious thinkers who plunged into deep explorations on this subject.  People became more and more concerned about neuroses and complexes, and irrational desires, and with all of that came a huge flood of writing about the mob mentality, about the mind of the crowd, and about the so-called “herd instinct.” And suddenly, human nature didn't seem quite so enlightened or stable or rational, as many had hoped. So, I think those are all factors that contributed to the explosion early in the 20th century of new fears concerning the power of propaganda and its impact on democratic government.

PWN What are some of historical parallels between the idea of propaganda and publicity, particularly before WWII, and the fake news of today? 

LWH There are many similarities. WWI helped to produce a cult of propaganda similar to the current obsession with fake news. But the implications concerning this new power of mass public information were not always negative, especially at first. Those who saw it in a more favorable light tended to talk about the new power of “publicity”— and its great potential for reforming society. President Theodore Roosevelt fell in love with the potential of good “publicity” over a century ago.  He said that publicity “is the great cure, the great antiseptic. If you shine the light of publicity on public affairs, then things will start to go well.”  And his enthusiasm was widely shared during the Progressive Era, by reformers of all sorts and especially by newly empowered investigative journalists, who came to be described as “muckrakers.” 

Yet not everyone shared Roosevelt’s admiration of publicity A popular reaction of big business was to see publicity as a way to serve its interests—and so—at this time—both the public relations industry and the advertising industry got their big starts. And whatever you called it, publicity or public relations, or advertising, or government information, if you didn’t like it you began to call it “propaganda.” And the term came to be used in much in the same way that the term “fake news” is being used now. 

 

PWN One of the chapters mentions a correlation with a fascination of hypnotism during the late 19th century. Tell us more. 

LWH In the late 19th century there was an obsession with hypnotism that is featured in a novel, Trilby, which was one of the most popular novels of its time. The public was captivated with the sinister story of the character Svengali, who hypnotizes a young woman who lacked musical talent and transforms her into a world-class opera singer. Some people thought that perhaps there was a similar method behind mass media and that led to a public fear that maybe these masters of the media could play a Svengali-like trick on you. 

That, combined with people's interest in human mesmerism in the 1900s, and how it could be used to manipulate or heal the unconscious mind, led to even more fears about how mass information might be able to manipulate public opinion.

The concern then and now is that it became increasingly difficult to check out the accuracy of the messages that people are receiving. Society was too distended and the human mind too undependable to sort it all out. 

What democracy traditionally has meant over the centuries is that power to govern in a society depends, in the end, not on the coercive power of its leaders, but on the consent of the governed. But what the discovery of propaganda meant, for many, was that the consent of the governed could itself actually be coerced.

PWN Looking back, fast forwarding to today where fake news has become a huge concern with this disinformation delivery via technology such as social media…Are there lessons in the past, as to how to deal with this now? 

 

LWH Going back in history, new technologies have often been welcomed as having wonderful new potentials. And then there's a second wave, where people are scared to death, and that's happened recently with the Internet and social media. How wonderful, people initially said, that the Internet can allow anyone to say anything to anyone else--or to everyone--until people began to see the downside of that potential. And, strikingly, the same pattern can be seen in shifting human reactions to the advent of television, and the radio, and, indeed to the invention of the printing press, back in the 15th century. And one lesson we can learn from this history is that technologies of all sorts are really just tools. They will neither save us nor need they condemn us. It all depends on who is using them and how—for better or for worse.

And even going back further, I always love to cite the fact that Socrates himself worried a lot about the new technology of his age, which was called writing! Writing! And he said, “No it's going to wipe out the oral culture of ancient Greece, and we won't know anymore where this written information comes from, or how it originated, or even when it was written. We won’t know just whom it is that we can trust anymore. Current concerns about the potential misuses of social media have their parallels going back over time.

So, one of the themes of this book, in a way, is that there's nothing new under the sun. And maybe we can even take some comfort from the lessons of history and the fact that humankind, more often than not, has been able to cope successfully with these recurring challenges.

                                                        ###

 

Biography

Lee W. Huebner is the former publisher and CEO of the International Herald Tribune newspaper and former special assistant to the President of the United States during the Nixon administration. He earned his Ph.D. and M.A. in history from Harvard University. Huebner is the Airlie Professor of Media and Public Affairs at George Washington University, where he teaches courses on journalism ethics, media and globalization, political speechwriting, and presidential communication. He is the author of “The Fake News Panic of a Century Ago: The Discovery of Propaganda and the Coercion of Consent.”  

Olivia de Havilland honored in Paris

Article by Lara Gabrielle

 

To most, Olivia de Havilland is known as a film star. Few are aware of her devotion to education, and to the American University of Paris (AUP) in particular. As the Monttessuy Center for the Arts opens, with her theater at the center, Olivia de Havilland’s name will be synonymous with educational excellence, her debt to her teachers repaid with each student who walks through its doors. 

In October 2021, the new Monttessuy Center for the Arts officially opened at 9 Rue de Monttessuy, the new artistic home for the AUP. The center will serve the growing liberal arts department at the site of the former library, now relocated to the Quai d’Orsay.  

In the late 1970s, the building that now houses the Monttessuy Center for the Arts was the art history building, so designated due to its high ceilings that could accommodate the slide projectors of the day. Art history classes later moved to Rue Bosquet, where they stayed for twenty years, but when AUP sold that building, the art department was left without a home. Classes and offices were scattered around campus, and there was no central location for art students to meet. But in 2014, a series of renovations grouped those classrooms and offices together again, and interest in the arts surged at AUP. Over the past five years, the arts department has grown 270%. This led the university to renovate 9 Rue de Monttessuy and recreate it as the hub of AUP artistic life. 

The renovation plans included the first ever theater at the university, with the idea that it would host film festivals, art galleries, panels, and classes. It is named after Olivia de Havilland, a two-time Academy Award-winning actress who was an early trustee and board member at AUP. De Havilland had always loved school, was a high-achieving student, and thrived in academic environments. But as a teenager, she went through a period of intense struggle. When she was 16, her stepfather, having learned that she was in a play without his permission, gave her an ultimatum––give up the play, or leave the house forever. De Havilland left the house.  

This was the beginning of a very dark period for her, and her grades began to slip until she was failing classes. It was her teachers, she remembered, who supported her during that challenging time. With the help of those teachers, she bounced back to the top of her class, graduating second at Los Gatos High School. From then on, she felt a duty to give back to the education system that helped her. She went on to an illustrious career as a film star, nominated for five Oscars and winning two. She never forgot her teachers, sending them Christmas cards every year until they had all passed away.

She moved to Paris in 1953. When her son, Benjamin, enrolled at AUP, de Havilland saw a way to actively repay the debt she felt she owed, to help students the way her teachers had helped her. She established herself as an active AUP parent, and in the mid-1960s, she became the first female trustee at the university. In 1970, she became a board member.  

It was a historic time for Paris, for students, and for the world. De Havilland watched the unfolding student unrest from her position as trustee, violence that culminated in the 1968 student revolts in Paris and those at Kent State in 1970. Viewing her position as one of student liaison to the university, she listened directly to student concerns and put students at the forefront of her work on the board. During this tense time, de Havilland brought what was happening in the streets directly to the upper echelons of the university. Fighting for the social change the student body demanded, she gave them an advocate and supporter at the highest level of university administration. 

In recent years, AUP served as a way for de Havilland to remember her son Benjamin, who died of Hodgkin’s lymphoma complications in 1991. She welcomed countless AUP friends, students, and fellow trustees into her home for support and advice, and remained the university’s unfailing champion. In 1994, de Havilland was awarded an honorary degree from AUP. In 2015, she was awarded the AUP Presidential Medal of Distinguished Achievement. 

De Havilland died in July 2020 at the age of 104. To celebrate the extraordinary place she held at the university, AUP began plans for a theater in her honor. It has now reached completion and is ready to welcome students. 

Three days of festivities led to the formal dedication of the theater and the ribbon cutting for the new Monttessuy Center for the Arts. On October 20, donors, friends of de Havilland, and university trustees attended screening of To Each His Own, the film that brought Olivia de Havilland her first Oscar win. Professor Marie Regan introduced the film, calling attention to de Havilland’s extraordinary use of her voice to communicate changes in character. The following night, de Havilland’s son-in-law Andy Chulack introduced The Heiress, de Havilland’s second Oscar-winning role. Chulack, an award-winning television editor, spoke of how well the film was edited and his favorite scene, when de Havilland’s character reacts with fury to her father––perhaps reflecting about her stepfather’s ultimatum and de Havilland’s own feelings when she was a teenager.

At noon on October 22, former OECD Ambassador Amy Bondurant moderated a panel with some of de Havilland’s closest friends and family members, who reflected on their fond and often hilariously funny memories with her. Audience members and panelists opened miniature bottles of champagne together, honoring de Havilland’s famous love champagne. It ended with an enthusiastic imitation of her distinctive laugh, led by de Havilland’s niece Deborah Dozier Potter.

The formal ribbon cutting of the theater occurred that evening. The audience heard remarks from professor Jonathan Shimony, Mayor Rachida Dati, Consul General Colombia Barrosse, university president Celeste Schenck and chair of the board of trustees Doris Daughney, who spoke on the importance of the work AUP is doing for its students and the world, and how this new artistic center will further the development of students’ humanity, the core of AUP’s mission. 

To most, Olivia de Havilland is known as a film star. Few are aware of her devotion to education, and to AUP in particular. As the Monttessuy Center for the Arts opens, with her theater at the center, Olivia de Havilland’s name will be synonymous with educational excellence, her debt to her teachers repaid with each student who walks through its doors. 

Further reading: Paris Writers News blog on I Remember Better When I Paint, a documentary narrated by Olivia de Havilland.

 

***

Lara Gabrielle is a California-based classic film writer and historian. Her blog Backlots is devoted to honoring and celebrating all aspects of classic film. In 2018, she covered De Havilland v. FX Networks LLC, and was in the courtroom when it was heard in the California Court of Appeal. For the past nine years, she has been writing a full-length biography of Marion Davies entitled CAPTAIN OF HER SOUL: The Life of Marion Davies, which will be published by the University of California Press in 2022. 

 

An interview with Cynthia Mitchell author of Hand Me the River

Cynthia Mitchell is a writer, psychologist and psychoanalyst from Cambridge, Massachusetts.  She moved to Paris in 2009, and in 2018 she became a French citizen.  Cynthia worked as the Global Counselor for New York University in Paris for ten years and then worked for three semesters at NYU in Buenos Aires.

Her short stories appear in the international journal, Per Contra.  Hand Me the River, her first novel, was published in 2019 and is available on Apple Books, Amazon, and other digital platforms.

Cynthia is interviewed by Françoise Schall-Wakai, author of Heurs et malheurs d’un restaurateur à Paris.

 

a Paris Writers News interview

_______

 

Françoise Schall-Wakai (FSW):  Hello Cynthia ,

While enjoying the progression of the story, the narrative and the main characters, I also learned a lot about bipolar disorder.  The questions below follow my thread of thought while and after reading your book.

What inspired you to write Hand Me the River, and how did you choose the title ? 

 

Cynthia Mitchell (CM):  When the title, Hand Me the River, occurred to me, it felt perfect.  It’s in the main character’s voice.  Lily is speaking, asking to hold all of life in her hands, yet a river, like time, is impossible to grasp.  The title captures Lily’s vast desires and the fleeting nature of our experiences. 

      I was inspired to write the story by the experiences with love and with psychiatric hospitals that I had in my twenties.  While it’s not exactly my story, Lily’s perceptions, her shifts of thought and her sometimes wild associations are known to me.  I wanted to convey the feeling of excitement from the inside, the ways that her world makes sense to her even as it may not to others, and also the way it feels to lose that world and that exhilaration.  I wanted to describe the power and mystery of love and how we are changed by people who recognize — or fail to recognize — us.

      The young people I’ve known have often shared concerns that resonate with Lily’s story — whether about the pressure from parents, the constraints of society, the difficulty figuring out how to use their talents, fears of not being good enough, or about the wish to love and to be loved.

 

FSW:  While reading Hand Me the River, I had flashbacks of people I encountered in my life. And after having read your book I could see them differently.  Was your intent to make bipolar disorder more accessible to a broader audience? Do you think such depictions can increase the general public’s empathy for people with bipolar disorder?

 

CM:  If I’ve made bipolar illness more accessible, I’m very glad.  I was most interested in describing Lily’s wishes, her struggles and her disarray.  I wanted readers to experience Lily’s world not from the position of an observer watching Lily careen through life but, instead, from the inside — to have the reader feel what it’s like to be that person careening through life.  I also wanted to show that one can recover, that life with such an illness or after such an illness can be full and rich.  All sorts of people — judges, car mechanics, teachers, doctors — have this illness and manage it successfully.

At the same time,  bipolar illness is only one aspect of Lily’s story.  The larger story is one all of us share — how to be one’s full self without losing connections to family and friends,  how to claim one’s own life and also live within the constraints of society.

 

FSW:  I found Lily’s manic episodes quite engaging, the way you describe how her own world and “energy expand”.  She says : “it astounds me to see things from so many different places” (…)  “ I’m dissolving”(…)  Could you share how you were able to describe Lily’s episodes so vividly to enable the reader to imagine them?

 

CM:  In my twenties, I had manic episodes and experienced many feelings like those of my character, Lily.  After I recovered, I feared that I might lose those feelings of expansive love and excitement.  In part, I wrote this novel to preserve them.  I drew on my memories and on journals that I kept at the time in order to create my protagonist, Lily.

 

FSW:  Nick is an intriguing character. His attitude of passively encouraging Lily's desire for him was notable throughout the book.  By not saying much about Nick, readers can draw their own portrait of him.  Is Nick typical of a man who gives just enough hope to keep the romance alive or does he have a more profound significance ?  Could Nick be the protagonist of another story?

      Readers have had different reactions to Nick.  I attended a book group on zoom in which one man despised Nick while another saw some of Nick in himself.  Several women have said, “Oh, yes, I had a Nick in my life.” 

Some see him as a cad, a scoundrel.  Others see him as charismatic and enchanting.  Nick provides a space for people to express themselves, he is accepting of all sorts of people, and he validates their creative efforts.  He doesn’t always see how attached others, particularly women, get to him.  Or perhaps he doesn’t want to see that.  He becomes attached to Lily in his way, and at the end of the story he is able to let her know how she affected him.

 

FSW:  Lily says : “Flirting. People who are flirting will say anything at all.  If that click, click feeling is in the air, they could say blah, blah, blah and it would be just fine, maybe even thrilling.” There is humor and also poetry in what Lily expresses : “Why do some people get love to keep while I am like a flimsy scarf floating through that place where love is?”  Who is the poet?  Lily in her manic phase or is she simply channeling the author's poetry?

 

CM:  I’m the writer and the poet.  I am all of Lily though she is only a sliver of me.

 

FSW:  You describe brilliantly how the lithium made Lily’s life “dull” and how she was trying to control herself.  But the therapy had limited effects and a mood regulator was necessary.  Lily asked herself : “Is this how life is?” (…) “Lithium makes me want to cancel my life, as if it were a magazine subscription and I could order a different one.”  Do you think that mood regulators necessarily imply to give up a part of the brighter, more exuberant side of the personality and excitement in life?

 

CM:  No, I don’t mean imply that. Not at all.  It takes time to adjust to lithium and that period can feel extremely difficult and can be a significant loss when it occurs, as Lily describes.  These feelings of loss are temporary and when one gets through it one can have a full range of feelings again though not the extreme highs and lows.

      Though perhaps I didn’t clearly portray this in the novel, I believe the impact of psychotherapy to be as powerful, or more powerful, than that of lithium.  One needs to be able to make sense of all that occurred.  What fueled her mania?  Were there earlier losses that she had not acknowledged?  But Lily couldn’t hear or absorb what her doctors offered without first being stable again with the help of lithium.  So in her case, lithium and psychotherapy worked together.

 

FSW:  She works at a law firm and becomes a better lawyer having more empathy for “eccentric” clients.  So, is this a positive side of her bipolar disorder in the end?  Can you tell us more?

CM:  Yes, she gains a more complex and nuanced view of herself and those around her.  She knows from her own experience that a person can be in what doctors consider serious trouble and come out the other side.  This gives her hope for her clients, eccentric and otherwise, because she knows things can get better.  She learns to step out of her own shoes and to see how the world might appear or feel in the shoes of her clients.  She is not put off or afraid of another’s person’s mind and she learns to look for the meaning behind odd language and disturbing behaviors, to understand what sense those things make through the eyes of the other person.

 

FSW:  I could imagine your book as a movie. Would you consider writing a screenplay one day? 

 

CM:  I love that you asked this.  I’ve also imagined it as a movie with scenes set in Haymarket in Boston, in Cambridge, and on Martha’s Vineyard.  When I first began to write this story, I wrote it as a screenplay but I didn’t have the skill to get inside Lily’s mind in that format.  There are many vivid scenes and dramatic moments.  I would love to have a screenwriter bring Lily’s world to life.

 

FSW:  Will there be a second volume about Lily or sequel to her story? 

 

CM:  I’m working on a new book which I’m calling Burst of Flame.  It’s not a sequel to Lily’s story but the characters are part of Lily’s extended family.  Sylvie, the narrator of Burst of Flame is Lily’s cousin.  Their grandfather, James, who was described in Hand Me the River as “exuberant and headstrong” and who “loved betting on the horses,” is an important character.  In this book, Sylvie struggles to understand herself and her mother, Anna, as Sylvie inadvertently discovers her mother’s secrets.

     

 Hand Me the River by Cynthia Mitchell

 

 

 

What portion of the French population is * NOT * fully vaccinated against coronavirus?

 

86 % of French people are not fully vaccinated against coronavirus (May 15, 2021)

I'll admit I'm having trouble wading through all the different statistics on coronavirus. 

The French government used to publish a super clear coronavirus dashboard: new cases, deaths, hospitalisations, Ehpad, vaccinations - but the layout changed recently and I find it confusing.

As the country prepares to reopen in a fit of political optimism which is not necessarily shared by the medical community (there have been dissenting voices), I wonder how many people in France are fully vaccinated.

Should be a super-simple calculation, non?

Worldmeter puts France's population at an exceedingly precise  65,399,347

And, as of today, May 15, 2021, the French government puts the number of fully vaccinated people at: 9,142,420.

Which comes to 13.98%

That should mean that the number of people in France who are not fully vaccinated is:  65,399,347 - 9,142,420 = 56,256,927.

Which puts the portion of people in France who are not fully vaccinated at 86.02%

(May 15, 2021)

 

Lauren Grodstein on Children and Fiction

Lauren Grodstein

 

Novelist Lauren Grodstein, author of A Friend of the Family, will give a talk this July on Writing the Child as part of WICE’s Paris Writers Workshop.

It’s a striking topic.

Child characters in fiction aren’t for everyone. Many want their stories and novels as limited as restricted housing developments: young adults/thirtysomethings/middle-aged only. And yet there’s something truncated about a fictional world without kids. Conversely there’s something magical about fiction featuring children who come alive as characters, taking us back to our childhoods or reminding us of our own offspring.

 

Lauren Grodstein on Children and Fiction

a Paris Writers News interview

_____

 

Are there portrayals of kids in contemporary fiction that strike you as distinctive?

 I find that well-drawn kids show up in all sorts of works, including those that we don't think are necessarily about - and certainly not for - children (Cormac McCarthy's The Road), for example.  Some of my favorite short stories have kids in them: Amy Bloom's Love is Not a Pie, Judy Budnitz's Dog Days, Lawns, by Mona Simpson, and When Mr. Pirzada Came to Dine, by Jhumpa Lahiri.  Many of George Saunders's superb stories do too, as does his novel, Lincoln in the Bardo. I love the portrayal of kids in Toni Morrison's Sula.  There's a wonderfully drawn group of preteen boys in Colson Whitehead's Sag Harbor.  

There’s an even greater challenge when a novel is narrated by a child. Which writers maintain a plausible voice throughout a full-length work of fiction?

There's a very gentle novel called Jim the Boy, by Tony Earley, which is told from the perspective of a ten year old kid in North Carolina in the early part of the twentieth century.  It's just a lovely book: smart, well-told, and never condescending to him or to the time and location of the novel.  And it's a bit of a controversial pick, but I think Mark Haddon does a brilliant job in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime with his autistic teenage protagonist.  I also love the way Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer tell their stories.  

What don’t you appreciate in child characters?

I don't spend a lot of time with books I don't like, so the second something interrupts the narrative for me - say, a poorly written character - I tend to move on to the next book on my list.  But in general, any kid who's too cute, too cloying, too wise, too tantrum-y - those are the kids that really don't work, because they reflect grown up ideas about children instead of children themselves.

What's the best way to capture the way a child thinks?

In general, skew older.  As adults we tend to forget how smart kids are, how observant, and how articulate.  We are surprised, again and again, by what they know and what they're able to understand.  So if you think you're writing a five year old, write someone who you imagine has the capability of a seven or eight year old.  If you're writing a twelve year old, give them the intelligence and humor you'd generally give to a fifteen year old.  Kids - especially today's kids, who have very little defense against the rigors of the outside world - are much more sophisticated than we generally give them credit for.  Give them that credit in your writing.

 

______

 

Bio: Lauren Grodstein is the author of four novels, including the New York Times bestseller A Friend of the Family and the Washington Post Book of the Year The Explanation for Everything.  Her latest novel, Our Short History, was published by Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill in March, 2017.  Lauren’s work has been translated into French, Turkish, German, Hebrew, and other languages, and her essays and reviews have been widely published.  She teaches in the MFA program at Rutgers-Camden.

Lauren’s talk, Writing the Child, is opening this year’s Paris Writers Workshop. It will be presented virtually on July 5, 2020, at 6 pm Paris time. For further details and to register for the talk go to www.wice-paris.org

Even though we were all children once, as authors we sometimes have a hard time capturing the specific mannerisms, vocabulary, and interests of young people.  Sometimes we overcorrect for cuteness (writing children, for instance, who pronounce "spaghetti" as "pisgetti,") and sometimes go the other way, creating wise-beyond-their-years 10 year olds who see the truth the adults always miss.  In this craft workshop, Lauren Grodstein, whose four novels include children of various ages, will provide specific tips on accessing the speech and behavior of young people and ideas about how to create compelling fictional kids.

 

 

 

Sion Dayson book launch at the Red Wheelbarrow September 12th

Sion Dayson, author

It is with great pleasure that I present this interview with Sion Dayson, a talented and extremely interesting young author who I first met in a Paris writers' group several years ago. Her new novel, As A River, has just been released. Sion will celebrate the book launch in Paris at the Red Wheelbarrow bookstore on September 12th.

Sion Dayson was born in New York City, grew up in North Carolina, and earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Utne Reader, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, the anthology Strangers in Paris, and many other venues. Her writings often focus on travel, living abroad, and her literary hero, James Baldwin. She has won grants and residencies from The Kerouac House, Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Stone Court Writer-in-Residence Program. She also got the chance to spend a month writing in Edith Wharton’s house, The Mount. Her popular blog paris (im)perfect explored the City of Light’s less glamorous side. After a decade in Paris, she now resides in Valencia, Spain. As a River is her first novel.

As a River Paris Book Launch

 

Sion Dayson on As A River, 

a Paris Writers News Interview

LZ: Sion Dayson, can you pinpoint the moment when you decided to be a writer?

SD: There was no exact moment, probably because the possibility was always in the air. My mother was a librarian for over 45 years. As you can imagine, the house was filled to the brim with books. She also took us to lots of foreign and independent films and I adored American Movie Classics (I wanted to be a host on the TV channel!). I think being immersed in both books and film from an early age led to a love of storytelling so it wasn’t a huge leap to start writing. Instead of going outside to play like other kids, I would stay inside and type stories on my mom’s electric typewriter. Now it’s a laptop.

How did you hone your craft?

There’s no shortcut. Lots of reading and writing. I took classes, which were helpful. I also did a low-residency MFA. I like the low-residency structure because it allows you to work one-on-one with a mentor – the more independent model (as opposed to weekly workshops) worked well for me. But a program isn’t necessary to write. It’s the hours you spend trying to do the work where the craft gets honed.

Sion

What inspired you to write As A River?

I never start with a grand idea or theme in mind. All of my writing is sparked by something small – a stray line of dialogue, an image, a scent.

The genesis story behind the book is kind of funny. I was walking through Harlem one day and overheard some teenage girls gossiping. One said: “she’s pregnant and never even had sex.” Obviously my ears perked right up!

I went home and immediately wrote a scene inspired by that line. What came out featured a young girl named Esse in a small town in Georgia in an era before I was born. But then I got interested in her daughter, Ceiley. What would it be like to grow up with a mother who claims you were miraculously conceived?

Then a stranger came to town, a handsome man in his thirties with something troubling him from his past. I felt a lot of energy when Greer entered the picture and I knew I wanted to know more about him. That meant getting to know his mother Elizabeth and why she was so sad. And Caroline, his first love. And…you can see the cast of characters kept expanding.

Writing is a craft, but is also somewhat of a mystery to me, too. I stay open to what’s unfolding on the page and follow where it leads. Eventually it becomes more clear what I’m exploring, but even then it can be difficult to articulate. The novel deals with the dangers of silence, the question of shame, our struggles to understand each other, and our notions of identity and belonging. It’s also about the stories we tell ourselves and how that affects the way we move through the world.

Whose story is it?

For the most part, it’s Greer’s story. The story of his return to care for his dying mother – and confront the ghosts from his past. As the book advances, secrets are uncovered and we learn what haunts him.

But as I mention above, there is a larger cast of characters. Relationships, of all kinds, shape our lives. That is life.

So while I mostly stayed in close third person to Greer, there are moments when the narrative breaks out and other characters demand a say. Everyone has a story.

As a River by Sion Dayson

Was there a point in creating this work when you thought: I can’t go on?

I think that about every piece of writing! But yes, a novel is especially daunting. When I began, I thought it was just a short story, but then it just kept growing. It felt almost paralyzing to start thinking of it as a novel. A writing mentor had some sage advice: just call it a “thing.” Ha! It did take some pressure off while I was figuring out the larger project.

I don’t write with a plan in mind. There’s never an outline and I definitely don’t know where things are heading. I also write pieces in disparate, non-linear fragments. A major part of my work is figuring out how the pieces go together. It can be a frustrating process and there are moments when abandoning the project does feel tempting. But it’s also a thrill when things start connecting. I’m so glad I followed through.

You’ve lived in France, in Spain, in the USA. Where do you call home? - and why?

Right now I call Valencia home. For the simple fact that it’s where I actually live, of course, but on a more important level, it’s also because I truly feel great here. My decade in Paris was a gift and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. But parts of myself were also suppressed there and I felt somewhat out of step. Since moving to Spain, I feel like I’m blossoming again and am more comfortable in my own skin. Can home be where you feel most like yourself?

When I go back to the USA, I also say “I’m going home.” It’s where I was born and raised. There’s no discounting how deeply our origins shape us.

But yes, this concept of home is not as straightforward as it sounds. I think home is also something we carry within us. The last line in my book’s acknowledgments reads: “home is in the people we love."

What advice can you share with young novelists? 

Novels are big, messy things. It’s impossible to tackle such a huge project all at once. My best advice is to just keep chipping away at it, one sentence, one paragraph, one scene at a time.

What are you working on now?

A lot of promotion for the book! I’m doing wonderful interviews like this. (Thank you!) Talking on podcasts, taking over Instagram accounts. Soon, I leave for a mini-tour with events in Paris, New York, Philadelphia, and Massachussetts.

Publication of this novel was a long day coming. I wrote the first line of As a River in 2005! So I’m excited to finally help it fly out into the world now.

But when this promotional phase starts quieting down, I might return to a nonfiction project that I started a few years ago about my decade in Paris. I wrote a blog for awhile, paris (im)perfect, that would serve as a good springboard for a longer narrative project. Only the future will tell, though. I’m looking forward to seeing where my curiosity takes me.

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About the author: Sion Dayson was born in New York City, grew up in North Carolina, and earned an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts. Her work has appeared in Electric Literature, Utne Reader, The Wall Street Journal, The Rumpus, the anthology Strangers in Paris, and many other venues. Her writings often focus on travel, living abroad, and her literary hero, James Baldwin. She has won grants and residencies from The Kerouac House, Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the Stone Court Writer-in-Residence Program. She also got the chance to spend a month writing in Edith Wharton’s house, The Mount. Her popular blog paris (im)perfect explored the City of Light’s less glamorous side. After a decade in Paris, she now resides in Valencia, Spain. As a River is her first novel.

Sion will be celebrating her book’s launch at The Red Wheelbarrow in Paris on September 12 at 7 pm.

Feel free to check out her website for a full list of events. You can also follow her on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. She also writes a very occasional newsletter, Sion’s Sparkle Desk.