Artwork from Albertine.com for the French Embassy’s Albertine Books festival ‘Feminism Has No Borders’
By Porter Anderson, Editor-in-Chief | @Porter_Anderson
France’s Albertine Books Hosts Festival of Dialogue
The Cultural Services of the French Embassy and Albertine Books, the bookshop operated by the French Embassy in New York, have announced that writers and activists Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan are curators of the fourth annual Festival Albertine.
The title of the dialogue series this year: “Feminism Has No Boundaries.”
With its opening tonight (November 1) in New York City, the event runs through Sunday (November 5) with free events that bring together organizers, artists, writers, scholars, politicians, religious leaders and journalists “to explore the obstacles confronting women,” according to press materials, and also to “dare to dream of change and of a legitimate equality between women and men.”
Among speakers scheduled to participate:
- Laure Adler, journalist, author and cultural adviser to the late French President François Mitterrand;
- Film director and screenwriter Houda Benyamina
- Spoken-word poet, performing artist and LGBT rights political activist Staceyann Chin
- National Book Award-winning poet Robin Coste Lewis
- Author, playwright and Charlie Hebdo contributor Marie Darrieussecq
- Act Up activist and co-founder of the radical feminist action group La Barbe, Marie de Cenival
- Activist and politician Caroline de Haas
- Diller Scofidio + Renfro founding partner Elizabeth Diller
- Roxane Gay, author of Difficult Women and Bad Feminist, and contributing opinion writer for the New York Times
- Novelist Anne Garréta
- Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-founder and co-president of the Freedom From Religion Foundation
- The “feminist masked avengers” Guerrilla Girls
- Journalist and rabbi Delphine Horvilleur
- Daisy Khan, founder and executive director of the Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE)
- Arts director of the Monnaie de Paris Camille Morineau
- Playwright and lawyer specializing in the sovereignty of native tribes and peoples Mary Kathryn Nagle
- Environmental scientist Heidi Steltzer
- American pro-choice activist and president of Planned Parenthood Federation of America and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund Cecile Richards
- Algerian lawyer, author and former director of Women’s Rights at UNESCO Wassyla Tamzali,
- Christiane Taubira, former Justice Minister of France
- Journalist and Women Under Siege director Lauren Wolfe
- Elaine Welteroth, editor in chief of Teen Vogue
Program details are here. Programs are expected to be streamed live here.
Book Awards To Be Streamed Again
Cynthia Nixon
Nixon, an Emmy winner for her work in Sex and the City, is also known for award attention to her film and television work on Amadeus, The Philadelphia Story, The Manhattan Project, Indiscretions, The Little Foxes, Killing Reagan, and A Quiet Passion.
The emcee role at the National Book Awards’ annual big evening is not an entirely easy assignment, set as it is in a roomful of deeply experienced publishing industry wags with well-charged devices for tweeting.
Awards announced during the course of the evening include the National Book Awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and young people’s literature. The ceremony will also include the presentation of two lifetime achievement awards.
As reported earlier this month by Publishing Perspectives, each of four categories has five finalists chosen by a jury of four previous finalists and/or winners.
The awards program is to be streamed again this year, on the National Book Foundation site.