Uploaded April 2023 | Updated September 2026, 3 weeks ago
A conversation between Violaine Schwartz, Christine Gutman, and Alice McCrum at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 19/04/2023 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.
What is the relationship between migration and writing? When one’s life and legal status have been reduced to written files, what other possibilities for storytelling emerge?
In Papers, author Violaine Schwartz gathers the numerous and varied experiences of those seeking asylum in France. Having survived arduous and often life-threatening journeys from their home countries, the voices of this collection arrived in France only to learn that their odyssey had not yet ended. This is the story of the second half of their travels: through impenetrable bureaucratic systems, senseless administrative demands, and time itself as their wait for official government recognition draws on. A modern epic of human movement and a critique of violence in all its forms, the work is a damning portrait of the conditions of contemporary immigration: the reduction of community to arbitrary borders, shared humanity to anonymous policy, and life to pieces of paper.
About the speakers:
Violaine Schwartz is a French novelist, playwright, singer, and stage actor. Her novel Le Vent dans la bouche was awarded the 2013 Prix Eugène Dabit du Roman Populiste. In addition to writing and performing, she leads writing workshops in a variety of settings. Papers is her first book to be published in English.
Christine Gutman is a French-to-English translator with a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Papers, by Violaine Schwartz (Fern Books, 2022), is her first book-length literary translation. Other translations of hers have appeared in The Georgia Review, 3:AM and Samovar.
Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.
A conversation between Violaine Schwartz, Christine Gutman, and Alice McCrum at the American Library in Paris. Filmed on 19/04/2023 with a live audience both in person and on Zoom.
What is the relationship between migration and writing? When one’s life and legal status have been reduced to written files, what other possibilities for storytelling emerge?
In Papers, author Violaine Schwartz gathers the numerous and varied experiences of those seeking asylum in France. Having survived arduous and often life-threatening journeys from their home countries, the voices of this collection arrived in France only to learn that their odyssey had not yet ended. This is the story of the second half of their travels: through impenetrable bureaucratic systems, senseless administrative demands, and time itself as their wait for official government recognition draws on. A modern epic of human movement and a critique of violence in all its forms, the work is a damning portrait of the conditions of contemporary immigration: the reduction of community to arbitrary borders, shared humanity to anonymous policy, and life to pieces of paper.
About the speakers:
Violaine Schwartz is a French novelist, playwright, singer, and stage actor. Her novel Le Vent dans la bouche was awarded the 2013 Prix Eugène Dabit du Roman Populiste. In addition to writing and performing, she leads writing workshops in a variety of settings. Papers is her first book to be published in English.
Christine Gutman is a French-to-English translator with a PhD in comparative literature from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Papers, by Violaine Schwartz (Fern Books, 2022), is her first book-length literary translation. Other translations of hers have appeared in The Georgia Review, 3:AM and Samovar.
Evenings with an Author is generously sponsored by GRoW @ Annenberg.
