Conférence de l'autrice Ruth Gilligan

Conférence et atelier d'écriture co-organisés par Marie Mianowski (ILCEA4) et la SFR Création dans le cadre de son programme International Writing Residencies.

Conférence : Writing in a Time of Crisis / Écrire en temps de crise

[en anglais]

At a time of major global anxiety and worsening climate forecasts, what does it mean to be a writer of fiction today? Can - and should - contemporary novels attempt to face up to these challenges? Or are other forms better suited to reckon with the urgency of the moment? Through a mixture of personal reflection and textual analysis - from Beckett's Happy Days to Emily St John Mandel's Station Eleven - this talk will interrogate the role of art-making during difficult times in the hope of reaching an optimistic conclusion...

Bio : Ruth Gilligan is an award-winning novelist from Dublin now based in the UK where she works as a Professor of Creative Writing at the University of Birmingham. She was the youngest person ever to top the Irish bestsellers' list, while her most recent novel The Butchers (or Les Champs Brisées in French) won the 2021 Royal Society of Literature Ondaatje Award and the 2024 Prix des Lecteurs at the LEC Festival, Cognac. Her first play was staged in London in January 2026; meanwhile she contributes regular literary reviews to the Guardian and Irish Independent and is an ambassador for the global empathy-building charity Narrative 4.

Atelier d'écriture : ‘Creative Writing Workshop: Re-telling Old Texts - from Shakespeare to Super Mario!’ 

This three-hour writing workshop will explore the possibilities and politics of drawing on old material to tell new stories. Why the recent boom in Greek myth retellings? What do we gain from rewriting a familiar fairy tale from a new point of view? Just as in music, why do we gravitate towards cover versions instead of totally fresh ideas - or is there such a thing as a totally fresh idea anyway? Through a mixture of theory, examples and writing exercises, this workshop will explore these thorny questions and allow participants to attempt some re-tellings of their own...