Focus on Haiti in books and live

Turn on your screens and chat with Haitian writers live from Port-au-Prince! This is the advantage of digital prowess in times of pandemic. Those who could not have gone to the town hall on 15^e where the Haitian Book Fair is traditionally held will be able to attend the debates live on the site on December 5 and 6 between 5 and 7 p.m.

For this seventh edition, the organizers have invited Lyonel Trouillot to Haiti, who is publishing his next novel at the start of the January school year at Actes Sud editions. Antoine des Gommiers, Évelyne Trouillot, her sister and talented writer, Emmelie Prophète, who has just seen her latest novel The Villages of God, deeply rooted in a reality of his hometown, where gangs are rampant in cities with divine names (Éditions Mémoire Encrier). She was very recently a guest of the Nuit blanche in Port-au-Prince because there, we never give up in terms of culture! The proof by playwright and writer Guy Régis Junior, who has not given up on his annual theater festival in December Quatre Chemins, in the Haitian capital.

Closer to us, Louis-Philippe Dalembert is also invited. We know the novelist. Perhaps the poet less well. Or his Canticle of the stammering makes this nomadic feather one of the heirs of Saint-John Perse. It is a splendor to read and reread: check on piece at Bruno Doucey editions.

This year, the organizers have brought in publications directly from Haiti and will hear the words of publishers of literature and essays such as Legs edition in Port-au-Prince (with Dieulermesson Petit-brother), Mémoire encrier (with Sophie Barthélémy) and Cidhica (with Frantz Voltaire), the latter two based in Quebec.

Extension in December with the films of Arnold Antonin

Better, let’s be positive these days, the show plays the extensions by extending throughout the month of December, with the dissemination on the site of six portraits of Haitian writers and artists by the memorialist filmmaker of the creators of his island Arnold Antonin: his films on the writers Jacques-Stephen Alexis, Anthony Phelps and Frankétienne, (from 1^is to December 15) then on Jacques Roumain, the author of the essential Rulers of the Dew, the photographer Gérald Bloncourt and René Depestre. We do not miss an eternal life is the title given to the portrait of the latter, Prix Renaudot 1988, a nonagenarian still valiant in Lézignan-Corbières, and who has just published a real treasure in Actes Sud: diary of a poet who doubts when he does not leave great lyrical flights, devotes ardent pages to his love of women, in other words there is much more to read in this unpublished found in the archives of Limoges than notes on the commitment of the revolutionary poet alongside Castro from 1964 to 1978 The presentation of Serge and Marie Bourjea and the photo book make Notebook of an art of living a fascinating literary and political adventure, and a call to enter the poetry of the cantor of solar eroticism.

Haitian Book Fair: two meeting-debates will be broadcast on YouTube and Facebook Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 December from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. (French time).