Salon du Livre
Alliance Française Mpls/St Paul is excited to host again this year, Salon du Livre, on Saturday, September 30, from 9:30 to 1:30.
Join us for a morning of presentations with authors and literary personalities! Hear from authors about their recent publications, themes pertinent to the Francophone and literary world, and engage in audience Q&As.
9:30-10:15
Cathy Yandell
The French Art of Living Well:
Finding Joie de Vivre in the Everyday World
In the tradition of Bringing up Bebe and French Toast, Cathy Yandell's The French Art of Living Well is a delightful look at French culture, from literature to cuisine to humor and more, showing how the French have captured that magic elixir known as joie de vivre.
What is joie de vivre, and why is it a fundamentally French concept?
In search of those ineffable qualities that make up the joy of living, this lively book takes readers on a voyage to France through forays into literature, history, and culture.
How does art contribute to daily life? Why is cuisine such a central part of French existence? Why are the French more physical than many other cultures? How do French attitudes toward time speak volumes about their sense of pleasure and celebration? And finally, to what extent is this zest for life exportable? These and other questions give way to a dynamic sketch of French life today.
Peppered with anecdotes and humor, this book uncovers some of the secrets of the celebrated French art of living well. Drawing from her years of living in France as a student, professor, and mother, Yandell crafts an honest and profound appraisal of French culture and how la joie de vivre can be developed in anyone’s life.
Cathy Yandell is a professor at Carleton College, teaching courses in French Renaissance literature and culture, contemporary cultural and political issues in France, and the French language. Having published articles on writers from Louise Labé to Montaigne, she has also authored, edited, and co-edited several books including Carpe Corpus: Time and Gender in Early Modern France, Vieillir à la Renaissance, and Memory and Community in Sixteenth-Century France. In 2019, she was knighted by the French government into the Order of Academic Palms. When not buried in books, she loves dance, yoga, and flying trapeze. The French Art of Living Well is her first book for a general audience.
10:30-11:15
margaret todd maitland
In the Footsteps of the Impressionists
In a series of travel essays, Margaret Todd Maitland explores her search for the scenes that inspired the early French Impressionists, from Paris to the Coast of Normandy. Going beyond the informational imperative of the guidebook, her personal essays evoke places, paintings, and the mysterious ways that travel stimulates our imaginations. Offering a fresh look at the Impressionists, she will read “Meeting Monet at the Station,” in which an unexpected travel delay led to a series of revelations about her own past.
As a teacher, she believes that encountering another culture offers rich opportunities for self-discovery, and that taking time to explore our travels through writing means we gain insight into the world around us and the world inside us.
Writer, teacher, and editor, Margaret Todd Maitland offers creative writing classes, most recently at the Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, and is a former museum professional at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. During a year in the beautiful French-speaking Swiss town of Neuchatel, she worked hard at developing her French skills!
11:30-12:15
diane pecoraro
poetry session
Diane Pecoraro, poet, says her mind is “a cabinet of curiosities”. Presenter, educator, art lover, and not-too-bad speaker of French, she will read her work in a lively session about the process of linking words and ideas to create finished poems.
Her goal always: to engage an audience with accessible, but not shallow, ideas. Seriously committed to play and humor, she composes songs and rhymes for the sole (and quite serious) purpose of producing chuckles. Participants may try their hand at writing a short piece in French, English or whatever beautiful language their inner poet lives.
In her poems, Diane Pecoraro often addresses the quirky iridescent fragments of human interaction, political events, immigrant issues, social change and art. As the Community Poet of St. Louis Park, she aims to unite people around verse by encouraging a forum where all voices are heard. A public poet, she has hosted many readings; collaborated with artists at gallery events; presented workshops for children and adults; written for special occasions; read at cafes, book stores, libraries, the University Club series, open mics, and parties, to name a few.
12:30-1:15
Firouzeh Mostashari
Tolstoy's Hidden Stories: Meditations on a Serf Woman
On the eve of the emancipation of serfs in Imperial Russia, Count Leo Tolstoy found himself in love with a serf woman on his estate. This premarital romance, which resulted in the birth of Tolstoy's first child, remained in Tolstoy's memories for a lifetime. This volume presents a literary portrait of Aksinia Bazykina, Tolstoy's peasant interest, as featured in three fictional stories, "An Idyll," "Tikhon and Malanya," and "The Devil." The volume also contains a new translation of "My Life," the first autobiography of a serf woman in Russia, which was originally edited by Tolstoy himself.
In her bilingual presentation, the author will discuss the impact of Aksinia, a peasant “femme fatale”, on the future ideas and literary works of Leo Tolstoy, and compare and contrast her natural archetype with Tolstoy’s more à la mode Anna Karenina and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary.
Firouzeh Mostashari is a historian, playwright, and author. She is a scholar of Imperial Russia and earned her Ph.D. in History from the University of Pennsylvania. As an academic, she served as Associate professor of History at Regis College and visiting professor at Harvard University and the University of Iowa. In her teaching and writing, she often combines the study of history, culture and literature.
Mostashari is the author of numerous book chapters, and journal articles as well as the books On the Religious Frontier , and Tolstoy’s Hidden Stories. In recent years, she has also dedicated herself to writing theatre plays, including Woman with the Red Kerchief , Tiger and the Queen, and The Cleaner, co-written with Wendy Lement, as well as Becoming Catherine. Her plays and collaborations have been read and produced in Boston and Minneapolis.
She is a polyglot, nature enthusiast, and art lover.