Beyond Words French Literature Festival

Geneviève Laurenceau

Geneviève Laurenceau has been invited to perform as soloist with major French and international orchestras, under the direction of conductors such as Michel Plasson, Walter Weller, Tugan Sokhiev, Thomas Sondergard, Antony Hermus and Christian Arming, in prestigious venues such as the Théâtre du Châtelet and the Philharmonie de Paris, the Seine musicale de Boulogne, the Salle Gaveau, the Halle aux Grains de Toulouse, the Arsenal de Metz, the Opéra-Théâtre d’Avignon, the Métropole de Lausanne, the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussels, the Tapiola in Helsinki, the Palacio de la Opera in A Coruña, the Auditorium Manuel de Falla in Granada, the Stadttheater in Weimar;
She is artistic director of the Obernai Music Festival, founded under her direction in 2009.

David Bismuth

David Bismuth has participated in numerous festivals: La Roque d’Anthéron, Radio France – Montpellier, Piano aux Jacobins, Nohant Festival Chopin, La Chaise Dieu, Colmar, Saintes, Menton, Piano in Lyon, L’Esprit du piano in Bordeaux, La Folle Journée (Nantes and Warsaw), the Gstaad Menuhin Festival, the BBC Hay Festival, the Palazzetto Bru Zane in Venice or Villa Medici in Rome, Dom Muzyki in Moscow. A sought-after chamber musician, he shares the stage with pianists Bertrand Chamayou and Adam Laloum, violinist Geneviève Laurenceau and cellist Camille Thomas, and partners for reading concerts with Alain Duault or actor Didier Sandre.

Christopher Prendergast

Emeritus Professor in French as well as Fellow of the British Academy, Christopher Prendergast specialises in French literature and cultural history specifically for 19th and 20th centuries. He writes for the London Review of Books and the New Left Review. He is also the general editor of the Penguin reissues of Proust’s work, published in 2002. He contributed to many works and his book The Classic was selected as winner of the Gapper Prize.

Philippe Spall

Philippe Spall is a London based bilingual Anglo-French actor, and is often seen playing French accented characters on screen. Most notably he was the irate chef Monsieur Courbet in the first Downton Abbey movie. Stage credits include Against (Almeida, dir. Ian Rickson), Trash Cuisine (Young Vic, Belarus Free Theatre) and Cyrano De Bergerac (with Marianne Badrichani).
Although he has played many French characters on the British screen, and performed in English in France, Molière : Je t'aime moi non plus will be his first French theatre piece in England.

Edith Vernes

Edith Vernes is a French actress who made her debut in Hamlet, directed by Patrice Chéreau. She went on to perform leading roles in plays by Racine, Shakespeare, Oscar Wilde and Sacha Guitry. Since Edith arrived in the UK, she performed in Discours sur le Bonheur (French Institute), then Three Splits/Trois Ruptures (London and Beijing), Ionesco/Dinner at the Smiths (London, Paris), and Sacha Guitry, ma fille et moi, directed by Marianne Badrichani.
Film credits include: The Origin Of Violence and War and Peace (BBC)

Ben Okri

Ben Okri is a poet, playwright, and novelist. Among his many accomplishments, he has published Booker Prize winner The Famished Road, and Astonishing the Gods, which was selected as one of the BBC’s ‘100 novels that shaped our world.’ In 2018 he adapted Camus' The Outsider for The Coronet Theatre to much critical acclaim. His most recent works include the novel The Freedom Artist, a volume of short stories, Prayer for the Living, a book of poems, A Fire in My Head, and his environmental fable for all ages, Every Leaf a Hallelujah.

Deborah Levy

Deborah Levy is the author of several novels including Things I Don't Want to Know, The Cost of Living and Real Estate, an innovative and critically praised trilogy. She has been shortlisted twice each for the Goldsmiths Prize and Booker Prize and won the Prix Femina Etranger in 2020. Her short story collection, Black Vodka, was nominated for the International Frank O'Connor Short Story Award and was broadcast on BBC Radio 4. She has also written for The Royal Shakespeare Company and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Hervé Le Tellier

Hervé le Tellier is a writer, journalist, mathematician, food critic, and teacher. Since 1992, he has been a member of the prestigious and experimental Oulipo group of writers and mathematicians, who work to push against the boundaries of form and structure. The Anomaly was awarded the Prix Goncourt in 2020, and has since sold over a million copies worldwide.

Lola Lafon

A writer and a musician, Lola Lafon’s formative years were spent between Sofia, Bucharest, and Paris during the time of the cold war. Her six novels are characterised by their formal inventiveness. Her acclaimed novel Reeling, first published in France in 2020 by Actes Sud, is a fractured portrait of a young dancer, Cléo, whose life precipitates into silence following a chilling event. Lafon also serves as her characters’ spokeswoman, performing spoken word and musical shows.

Bill Johnston

Bill Johnston is a Professor of comparative literature at Indiana University and prolific Polish language literary translator. He is ntoable for exposing English-speaking readers to classic and contemporary Polish poetry and fiction. He was awarded both Best Translated Book Award and the PEN Translation Prize. In 2008 he received the Found in Translation Award for his translation of new poems by Tadeusz Różewicz, a finalist for the National Books Critics Circle Poetry Award.