The American University in Paris which celebrates it’s 50th Anniversary this year, hosted a public reading and presentation of Saïdeh Pakravan’s latest French Poetry book « Entendu Ce Matin » (aka « heard this morning »). Nicole Gdalia ( of Caracteres publishing house) presented the new poetry collection Entendu ce matin followed by Belfond’s editorial director Celine Thoulouze who announced the French version of Mrs. Pakravan’s latest novel Azadi due in January 22nd ( c.f. Edition Broché at amazon.fr) .
Photos courtesy of : Mehdi Majidi, Ph.D (majidi@aup.edu) and Darius Kadivar (PersianRealm.com)
Entendu Ce Matin
A collection of poems inspired from serendipitous conversations overheard by the author over the years when wandering or jogging in the French capital and thought provocatively weaved into a series of witty, funny, and touching observations (real or imagined) of our contemporary times.
Azadi
Azadi is a gripping, beautiful novel centered on the MASS protests that followed Iran's contested 2009 presidential election. We experience these tumultuous events through the eyes of three young people and their families, all caught up in the post-election maelstrom. Through individual lives, Pakravan skillfully conveys the hopes and aspirations for change of Iran's younger GENERATION and the shattering of their dreams by a brutal repression. Azadi is chilling: it is a book you cannot put aside.” (*)
The beautiful evening was pursued with Mrs. Pakravan read excerpts of her poetry in impeccable French to an attentive crowd along with her son and film critic Ali Naderzad.
(*) courtesy of Haleh Esfandiary author My Prison, My Home: One Woman's Story of Captivity
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Saïdeh Pakravan Bio :
Poet, essayist, and author Saïdeh Pakravan was born in Iran but grew up in a cosmopolitan environment particularly immersed in the French language and culture at an early age. She writes equally in French and in English. Dividing her time bewteen France and the United States, she started writing at the age of eight dreaming of becoming a full time writer. Awarded with the F.Scott Fitzgerald prize and nominated for the Pushcart, she is the author of Arrest of Hoveyda : Stories of the Iranian Revolution , a Novel Azadi set during the Green Protests that rocked Iran in 2009 and which is due in January 2015 in it’s French version released by Belfond Editions.
She has been widely published abroad including North America and Europe. For nearly a decade she was also an activist against the Iranian Theocracy as editor in chief of a cultural magazine « Chanteh ». Today she is in charge of the foreign litterature section for the website écrits-vains and also a film critic for ScreenComment.
More on the Saïdeh Pakravan here :
www.saidehpakravan.com
http://thecounterargument.wordpress.com/
Bio Ali Naderzad :
Arts and entertainment critic, novelist, editor
He is a bilingual French-English writer of fiction and non-fiction with specific experience in film (mainstream, independent, world) and music publishes the movie blogs Screen Comment and Iranian Film Daily and has covered cinema at the Cannes Festival every year since 2006.
Ali has written for Blackbook (online), Anthem Magazine (Los Angeles) and About.com. He also writes news articles in French for The Huffington Post. Just completed a short story (in French) which will be published electronically by Edilivres.
France http://www.iranianfilmdaily.com