Pensées de Voyage: Writing about Travel
On ne fait pas un voyage, c’est le voyage qui nous fait. ~ Nicolas Bouvier
Henri Matisse, Interior with Violin Case (and notebook). Nice, 1918. From WikiArt, public domain US.
Join us at the Alliance for a literary event showcasing the work of three authors: Mary Feeney, Michael Kleber-Diggs, and Margaret Todd Maitland. They will be reading from their own work of travel essays and poems, in our Vaaler Galerie currently showcasing the exhibition Carnets de voyage!
“We do not make a journey, the journey makes us,” writes the traveler. Whether or not you keep a journal during a trip, it is important to collect your thoughts, to revisit the journey, and to discover through writing how it may have affected you. Reading from their own work, three writers offer travel essays and poems—reflecting on a stay at an artists’ retreat in Cassis, a startling encounter on a train ride through Belgium, and a new translation of prose poems about Normandy by Jean Follain.
This event is free and all are welcome! Registration is not required, but please consider registering and making a $10 donation to support our cultural programs like this one. Your support allows us to continue the presence of cultural programs which benefit our whole community.
Meet the authors
Copyright Ayana Muata
Michael Kleber-Diggs
Michael Kleber-Diggs is a 2023-2025 Jerome Hill Artist Fellow in Literature, a poet, essayist, literary critic, and arts educator. His debut poetry collection, Worldly Things (Milkweed Editions 2021), won the Max Ritvo Poetry Prize. Michael’s essay, “There Was a Tremendous Softness,” appears in A Darker Wilderness: Black Nature Writing from Soil to Stars, edited by Erin Sharkey (Milkweed Editions, 2023). He spent most of this summer in Cassis, France, working on his next book. Michael’s poems and essays appear in numerous journals and anthologies.
Margaret Todd Maitland
Writer, editor, and teacher, Margaret Todd Maitland has worked as cataloguer of new acquisitions at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, as editor of the book review journal Ruminator Review, and most recently as a teaching artist at the Loft Literary Center, where she has offered classes in Creative Nonfiction. Her personal essays have appeared in anthologies of travel writing, on Minnesota Public Radio, the Star/Tribune editorial pages, and as a Notable Essay in Best American Essays. During a year in the beautiful French-speaking Swiss town of Neuchâtel, she worked hard at developing her French skills!
Mary Feeney
Jean Follain (1903-1971) was born and raised in the Basse-Normandie village of Canisy. The cataclysm of the First World War and advent of the Second were constant themes in his work. He was awarded the Grand Prix de l’Académie Française in 1970. Mary Feeney’s literary journey with Follain’s prose poems began in 1970 as she and her mentor, William Matthews (1942-1997), tackled the translation of some 90 texts. Forty-four of these were published as A World Rich in Anniversaries by Grilled Flowers press in 1979. Mary is a published poet and longtime member of AFMSP.