France has always been the home to innovative writing, and the new wave of French writers is as shockingly unconventional as the Surrealists or New Novelists were in their day. Dalkey Archive's Review of Contemporary Fiction has just published an issue dedicated to the French publishing house at the crest of this wave: Editions P.O.L.
A roundtable discussion of the new French writing will include John O'Brien (founder of Dalkey Archive Press), and Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens (founder of Editions P.O.L), as well as writers Mark Polizzotti and Brian Evenson and Brooklyn Academy of Music Humanities Manager Violaine Huisman.
Mark Polizzotti’s books include the collaborative novel S. (1991), Lautréamont Nomad (1994), Revolution of the Mind: The Life of André Breton (FSG, 1995), Luis Buñuel’s Los Olvidados (British Film Institute, 2006), and Bob Dylan: Highway 61 Revisited (Continuum, 2006). His articles and reviews have appeared in The New Republic, ARTnews, The Nation, Parnassus, Partisan Review, and elsewhere. The translator of over thirty books from the French, including works by Gustave Flaubert, Marguerite Duras, Raymond Roussel, André Breton, and Jean Echenoz, he has been an editor at Random House, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, David R. Godine, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He currently directs the publications program at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Brian Evenson is the author of ten books of fiction, most recently the limited edition novella Baby Leg, published by New York Tyrant Press in 2009. In 2009 he also published the novel Last Days (which won the American Library Association's award for Best Horror Novel of 2009) and the story collection Fugue State, both of which were on Time Out New York's top books of 2009. His novel The Open Curtain (Coffee House Press) was a finalist for an Edgar Award and an IHG Award. His work has been translated into French, Italian, Spanish, Japanese and Slovenian. He lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island, where he directs Brown University's Literary Arts Program. Other books include The Wavering Knife (which won the IHG Award for best story collection), Dark Property, and Altmann's Tongue. He has translated work by Christian Gailly, Jean Frémon, Claro, Jacques Jouet, Eric Chevillard, Antoine Volodine, and others. He is the recipient of three O. Henry Prizes as well as an NEA fellowship.
John O'Brien is the founder and publisher of Dalkey Archive Press and the Review of Contemporary Fiction at the Unviersity of Illinois in Champaign, Illinois. Dalkey Archive has published over 60 French titles, and many of these are POL authors.
Paul Otchakovsky-Laurens was born in 1944. After law school, he began working at Christian Bourgois as a trainee where he subsequently became a reader. He was hired in 1970 by Flammarion, and in 1972 he created the “Textes” imprint, in which he published such notable figures as Bernard Noël, Marc Cholodenko, and René Belletto. In 1978 at Hachette, he created the “Hachette-P.O.L” imprint, which became a full department in 1979. There, he published Emmanuel Hocquard, Georges Perec (who won the Prix Medicis in 1978 for “Life A User’s Manual”), Danièle Sallenave (who won the Prix Renaudot 1980 for “The Doors of Gubbio”), Leslie Kaplan’s first book, and one hundred other titles. In 1983, with the support of Flammarion, he created Éditions P.O.L, which he has directed since then and where he has published more than a thousand books over 28 years. Today P.O.L is part of the Gallimard Group and publishes approximately 50 books per year, chiefly novels and poetry.
Violaine Huisman is Humanities Manager at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. Before assuming this position she worked as an editor and rights director with Seven Stories Press and as a literary agent with Sterling Lord Literistic. She represented POL's list in the US for several years, helping publish Marguerite Duras, Jean Rolin, and Dumitru Tsepeneag, among others. She has served as an English language interpreter for French writers and artists, and her translations from the French have appeared in various publications, including the New York Times Magazine. She currently moderates monthly discussions with contemporary French authors for "Write about Now" a series co-presented by Bookforum and the Villa Gillet at the French Institute Alliance Francaise.
