Festival America Brussels: Richard Powers & Colson Whitehead
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During the penultimate weekend of September, America will be the order of the day. The most important writers from the US, Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean will make their appearance at Festival America, a major biennial literary festival in Vincennes near Paris.
When Paris sneezes, Brussels catches a cold … As with the previous edition of Festival America in 2016, we will provide the prelude to the French festival in Brussels. Together with Festival America and Flagey, we have invited two absolute giants of American literature to our capital: Richard Powers and Colson Whitehead!
Colson Whitehead
Not many writers have won both a National Book Award and a Pulitzer Prize. Even rarer are those writers who have twice been finalists for the Pulitzer. Enter Colson Whitehead. The writer from New York is without doubt one of the sensations of American literature of the past few years.
His international breakthrough came with The Underground Railroad, a historical novel about the road to freedom taken by two slaves from an American plantation in the nineteenth century.
Colson Whitehead will be interviewed by Adam Biles.
The Guardian on The Underground Railroad
Richard Powers
Richard Powers hardly needs an introduction. If you’re not familiar with his name from The Goldbug Variations, then The Echo Maker is sure to ring a bell – if only because Powers put the finishing touches to it during his residency at Passa Porta – or, which is also possible, because it won the National Book Award ...
This year Powers added a twelfth book to his bibliography: The Overstory. The novel’s ingredients are unmistakably his: science, technology, American history and fundamental questions about our world, brought together in a fascinating, fast-paced story.
Richard Powers will be interviewed by Annelies Beck.
‘Impossible for Richard Powers to write an uninteresting book’, said the grande dame of American literature Margaret Atwood. And who are we to contradict her.
The Washington Post
Passa Porta, Flagey, Festival America
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Jesse Ball
Done with empathy, compassion and equality. In The Diver’s Game, Jesse Ball sketches a dystopian world that is frighteningly credible.