My Childhood Public Library Was Located in this Castle

In December 2016, WordPress asked writers, photographers, artists, poets, and business and website owners a simple question: what’s in store for you and your blog/website in 2017?

A few months later, I would offer the same response I did back then.

Through my blog, I open a window on my life spent between two languages and cultures (French and American English).

With this goal in mind I decided to participate once again to the A to Z Challenge.

Here is what you can expect to find every day but Sundays for the month of April:

A selection of French authors, a man and a woman, for each letter of the alphabet.

A couple of facts related to this challenge:

1- Here in the US, I don’t find too many French books translated in American English.

The most famous French writers remain Camus with The Stranger and Victor Hugo with Les Misérables. Some Francophiles know the contemporary work of a few authors, Michel Houellbecq, for example. However, the vast majority of Americans see France either as an old country or as a pink-chic land.

2- With the support of Livrophage extraordinaire, a French avid reader I’ve only met through our mutual blogs and our e-mail correspondence, I was convinced to build a list of contemporary French authors.

We decided that this challenge should focus on writers from the 20^th century with books published in the 20^th and 21^st century.

In an interesting way, my French virtual friend devours American literature. Coming up with a list of  French authors from A to Z will be a challenge for her, too.

In a natural way, she decided to write in French while I will write in English. Our posts won’t be translated and won’t alternate regularly between the two languages. They will depend on our knowledge and interest for a specific author.

So…

My hope is that everyone of you will find something, in either language.

After all, this is the life I live every day.

It’s a way of life that carries its own challenges but offers countless surprises. And I love it just the way it is.

I hope you will enjoy this challenge and will stop by once in a while, maybe to refresh your French 🙂 and perhaps to discover a new French writer and fall in love with her/his words.

Meanwhile, for everyone dealing today with the spring nor’easter, a photo taken a few years ago along a snowy California trail, also in the spring.